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Text File | 1991-01-01 | 192KB | 3,705 lines

THE GRADING ASSISTANT _____________________ a grade averaging system for teachers Advance Release of Version 4.0 January 1, 1991 (SHAREWARE Distribution Version) COPYRIGHT NOTICE ________________ This program and manual are copyright (C) 1987-1991 by the author, Jim Reid. All rights are reserved worldwide. Contents ________ System Features......................................................1 System Requirements..................................................4 Software Installation................................................5 Changing the Printer Setup...........................................6 Using Your Mouse.....................................................9 Telling TGA The Disk/Directory to Use for Data......................10 Using Colors........................................................11 Distribution Information............................................11 Did You Get Everything?.............................................13 Program Limits......................................................15 Getting Started.....................................................15 The Grading Assistant -- MAIN MENU..................................17 Your First Lesson...................................................18 Lesson 1 - Setting up a Grading File................................19 Lesson 2 - Defining The Grading Information.........................20 Lesson 3 - Entering Grades..........................................21 Normal Processing...................................................22 Entering and Editing Grades.........................................24 The Grading Assistant -- GRADING MENU...............................24 Choosing a Grade Averaging Method...................................26 Entering Class Description Information..............................27 Entering Student Names..............................................27 Entering Grading Information........................................28 Entering Grades.....................................................29 Special Feature - Additions to Final Grade Average..................30 Special Feature - Extra Points for Specific Grade Types.............30 Entering Scoring Information........................................31 The Grading Assistant -- SCORING MENU...............................31 Summary of Special Data Entry Keys..................................33 Displaying and Printing Reports.....................................34 The Grading Assistant -- MAIN REPORTS MENU..........................34 Current Period Grade Average Reports................................34 Current Period Reports Menu.........................................35 Entering Heading/Footing/Comments on the Interim Report.............36 Including/Excluding Students on Individual and Interim Reports......37 Saving Interim Report Student Names for Labels......................38 End-Of-Year Grading Reports.........................................38 Starting a New Grading Period.......................................39 The Grading Assistant -- END-OF-GRADING-PERIOD MENU.................40 DOS Utilities.......................................................42 The Grading Assistant -- UTILITY MENU...............................42 Detailed Example....................................................44 Graphing Your Grade Averages........................................48 The Grading Assistant -- GRAPHICS MENU..............................48 Printing a Copy of your Graph.......................................49 Student Information Records.........................................50 The Grading Assistant -- STUDENT INFORMATION MAIN MENU..............50 Loading/Editing Student Information.................................51 Loading Student Names from a Grading File...........................51 Editing Student Information.........................................52 Printing Student Information........................................52 Printing Gummed Labels..............................................52 Exporting Your Grades in DIF Format.................................53 Error Codes.........................................................53 Last Words..........................................................54 Use Agreement _____________ These diskettes (or Bulletin Board files) contain The Grading Assistant (TGA), a program for your IBM compatible personal computer. By using this program you are agreeing to the terms defined in this section. Please read the following paragraphs carefully: 1. The Grading Assistant program and documentation are the property of the author. Both are copyright (C) 1987-1991 by Jim Reid, and all rights are reserved worldwide. Even though the program is distributed through the SHAREWARE method, and it can be freely copied within the limits of this agreement, there are still some limitations to protect the integrity of the distribution of the program and to support its future enhancements. 2. This program may not be copied or shared for use outside the United States. Within the United States, you may make copies of this diskette, give copies to your friends, and even upload TGA (as a single compressed file) to an electronic bulletin board service, provided that you in no way alter the contents of the ________ programs or documentation, and that all TGA programs and files are included. 3. The author will not be liable for any damages under any __________________ circumstances resulting from your use of, or inability to use, this program. The program is provided "as is", without either expressed or implied warranty. The responsibility for determining the accuracy of this program and the suitability to your needs rests entirely with you. 4. You may not: distribute this program in connection with any other _______ product or service without a written distribution agreement from _______ the author; charge anything for copies of, or the use of, this program other than a cost reimbursement fee (not to exceed $5) for distributing it; modify the program or documentation in any way; or distribute the documentation in a printed form without written permission of the author. 5. On whatever computer this program is used productively, a registered copy must be obtained from the program's author. You may evaluate TGA for up to 30 days to determine its utility to ________ you. If you do not continue to use TGA after the evaluation period, then you do not need to register. Continuing to use The Grading Assistant after you have evaluated it requires you to ________ register it. When you register TGA, you are supporting the past and future development of this program. Send the $20 registration fee along with your name and address on the Shareware Registration Form on the following page. This will register your copy, and thus entitle you to information about future releases as well as help should you run into any problems using the program. Only by supporting SHAREWARE program authors can you encourage them to provide low-cost, high quality software. Shareware Registration Form ___________________________ Please complete and return this registration card if you continue to use The Grading Assistant (version 4.0) after your 30-day evaluation of it. ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Last Name First Initial ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Street Address or Post Office Box ---------------------------------------------------------------------- City State Zip Code ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Telephone Number (please include area code) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Date of Registration Your brand/model of PC and printer ---------------------------------------------------------------------- How did you first learn about TGA? Please enclose your check for $20, made out to Jim Reid. and mail it to: The Grading Assistant 505 East Charlotte Street Sterling, VA 22170 You will receive written confirmation of your software registration, the latest version of the program, and instructions on how to get help from the program's author if you run into difficulties. Site license agreements are available to educational institutions. THANK YOU FOR SUPPORTING THE SHAREWARE DISTRIBUTION SYSTEM System Features _______________ The Grading Assistant was designed to help teachers record student grades throughout a grading period and produce student and class average reports whenever they are required. The Grading Assistant has the following features: 1. GRADE CATEGORIES: You can define different categories of grades ________________ which you will score for each class. For example, a typical class might have grades for daily work, homework, projects, tests, and quizzes. You can define the grading average percentages (weights) you want each grade category to have for each class. For example, in your Social Studies class you might want daily work to be 25% of the final grade, homework 25%, projects 20%, tests 15%, and quizzes 15%. You can change the grade categories and percentages at any time. These can be the same for every class, or different for each one, as you choose. 2. LETTER GRADES: The Grading Assistant computes both numerical and _____________ letter grade averages for students. The program uses a standard letter grade scheme of "A" through "D" modified with "+" and "-", and "F" for failing grades. If you want, you can change the letter grades used. You can also define the numerical grade ranges for each letter grade. For example, you might define an "A" as any score over 95. 3. REPORTS: The Grading Assistant has all of the reports you will _______ need in a school year. The current grade average report shows for each student in each class: final average as a numerical score, final average as a letter grade, and student averages for up to 12 different categories of grades per class. It also shows the class grade distribution counts by letter grade. (For example, 5 A's, 4 B's, and 6 C's.) A special grades posting report makes it easy for you to post student grades by class, showing grade averages by student identifiers (such as Social Security numbers) rather than by names to provide privacy. The student interim grade report allows you to produce a listing for each student whose current average is below a cut-off numerical grade (such as 70). Every student, in every class you specify, whose current grade average is below the reporting cut- off grade will be listed along with their current grade average. You might use this report to send home an interim note to the parents of your students who are failing. 1 1 The class roster report lists the students in each of your classes. This report might be useful to you for checking class attendance or manually recording student grades. The year-to-date grade average reports list for each student and each class the overall average in each of the past grading periods for this school year. An overall school year average is shown for each student in each class. You might use this to compute the final class grade average for your students at the end of the school year. There is also a grade average summary report that lists students alphabetically, regardless of their class and subject. There is a student grade summary report that lists the current grades for a single student. 4. GRADING: If you wish, The Grading Assistant will automatically _______ drop one or more of the lowest scores for each student in a class for a particular grade category. For example, you might use this feature to drop the lowest two DAILY grades for each student in your Spelling class. You can also tell The Grading Assistant to add one or more points to the final average for selected students during the grading period. This feature is useful when you give extra credit assignments, or if your school has a minimum grade score. The grade presentation menu resembles a typical electronic spreadsheet, and it operates in much the same way. You enter rows and columns of grades for each class. Rows are students; columns are individual grades. You supply the information and The Grading Assistant does the rest. The Grading Assistant has a special data entry feature which makes it easy to key in a new set of grades for your students. You just position the cursor to a new (empty) column of grades and press one key (F4). The Grading Assistant prompts you to enter the grades for each student in the class, one by one. A special feature of this method of data entry is that you can use TGA as a scoring key. For example, suppose you gave a quiz with 23 questions of equal value. Normally, you would have to grade the quizzes and use a scoring key to tell you that - for example - a student who answered 21 correct gets a grade of 91. With TGA, you can simply tell the program that a perfect score is 23 and enter the number of questions that each student got right. TGA will translate each entry into the equivalent percentile score. (You enter 21, TGA stores 91.) One of the common problems of grading programs is that you often need to list student averages during a grading period, before the ______ students have grades for every category you have defined for that class. For example, your students may not have completed a class PROJECT, yet the PROJECT grade is worth 25% of their final grade. What do you do? The Grading Assistant handles this problem by substituting for the missing grade category the average of the 2 2 first non-zero grade category, perhaps the DAILY grade. For example, if the student has a DAILY average of 92, but no PROJECT grade, then The Grading Assistant substitutes the DAILY average for the PROJECT average for that student. This is useful for computing interim grade averages during the grading period. 5. UTILITIES: The Grading Assistant has several special features for _________ setting up new grading sheets at the start of a new grading period. One feature will save the grading period averages (for use in computing the year-to-date student grade average). Another feature will keep the current student and class information, but remove the grades from the previous grading period so that you are ready to enter new grades for this period. There are also features that allow you to list the names of grading files, rename them, delete them, and make copies of them. Another feature will make backup copies of all your data files. While these same functions are also available in DOS, The Grading Assistant eliminates the need to learn and use DOS to maintain your grading files. 6. GRAPHICS: If your PC has graphics capability, you can use a ________ special program named TGAGRAPH to display your current grade averages, or the grade averages from a previous grading period, as a simple bar graph. 7. STUDENT INFORMATION: An optional program named TGAINFO can be ___________________ used to maintain a record of each student's address and telephone number. You can use this program in conjunction with the Interim Grade Report to generate mailing labels for students whose parents are to be mailed a report of their child's grades. You can also use this program to keep a handy student information record. 8. GRADE AVERAGING METHODS: TGA supports two different types of _______________________ grade averaging methods. Under the first method, grade averaging, _______________ you define one or more weighted categories of grades. Each grade is recorded against a 100-point maximum, and collectively the grades in a category are averaged, then multiplied by the category weight. Using the second method, point averaging, each _______________ grade can represent one or more total grade points. To compute the average, TGA computes the ratio of total points earned against total points possible. The point averaging method does not use grade category weights. If you are already quite familiar with your PC and you are experienced in installing and learning new PC programs, you may wish to skip the rest of the introductory material and go right to the section entitled "Getting Started." The next few sections describe the basic PC functions needed to install and run this program. 3 3 System Requirements ___________________ To use The Grading Assistant, you need an IBM or 100% compatible personal computer (PC) with: * at least 400K of free memory (called RAM, for random access memory) in which TGA can run; * either two floppy diskette drives, or one floppy drive and one hard disk drive; * IBM or Microsoft DOS (disk operating system) version 3.0 or later; (NOTE: You are welcome to try TGA under DOS 2.11. Some of my customers run with it without problems, but I cannot guarantee that it will run. The reason for this is that on some "clones" - IBM-compatible PCs, sometimes referred to as MSDOS machines - the basic input/output system (BIOS) is not completely compatible with IBM's BIOS. If you experience unusual problems under DOS 2.11, please try DOS 3.0 or higher.) and * an Epson "FX" or compatible printer. (However, the program can be configured to run with other printers by using the TGAPRINT option described later in this documentation.) Except for the TGAGRAPH program, which uses your PC's graphics interface, all other TGA programs run in text mode, with 25 lines of 80 characters each. Virtually all PCs can support this mode. (Although your EGA or VGA display can run in 43-line mode, or greater, TGA will not work in any mode but 80x25.) TGA uses your DOS's features to determine whether your PC uses a monochrome or color monitor. It writes directly to your PC's display memory for speedy display. A few PCs, primarily the earlier IBM clones that weren't quite IBM compatible, may have trouble with this. If you seem to have problems displaying TGA menus, this is probably the culprit. In some cases, merely upgrading to DOS 3.1 or later will fix this. TGA was designed to run on a minimally configured IBM compatible system. Thus, this version of the program does not take any special advantage of graphics, extended/expanded memory, math coprocessors, laser printers, or other state-of-the-art PC capabilities. However, it does recognize the presence of a color monitor and automatically adjusts its display accordingly. TGA has been tested on both 'PC class machines' (with 8086 and 8088 processors), 'AT class machines' (with 80286 processors), and 80386 processor machines. It has been tested with CGA, Hercules, PC-3270, EGA, and VGA graphics cards/monitors. TGA includes TGAGRAPH, a program which will display simple bar graphs of current and prior grading period averages. If you have a PC with graphics capability then you can use this program. TGAGRAPH supports the following graphics interfaces: CGA, MCGA, EGA, VGA, Hercules, AT&T 400 line, IBM 8514, and 3270 PC. Refer to the section on TGAGRAPH at the end of this documentation for more details. 4 4 Software Installation _____________________ The Grading Assistant is delivered in a compressed format for easier handling. That permits the delivery of four diskettes worth of software and documentation on two floppy diskettes. The TGA distribution diskette #1 has an installation program (INSTALL.EXE) which you should run to decompress the software and documentation before trying to run The Grading Assistant. (If you are already very familiar with PC compression programs, then you'll notice that the excellent free-ware LHARC program is used to do the file compression and decompression. If the need arises, you can use LHARC to view or decompress any of TGA's *.LZH files.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- IF YOU PLAN TO RUN TGA USING TWO FLOPPY DISK DRIVES Before you start, you need either one blank, formatted high density diskette (1.2M or more) or four blank, formatted dual density (360K) diskettes. If you don't have the formatted diskette(s), use the DOS FORMAT command to prepare them. (See your DOS Manual for help.) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- If you are installing from diskette, you need at least 900K of free ___________________________________ disk space. Put the TGA distribution diskette #1 in your A: drive and enter the following commands: A: INSTALL If you are installing from a downloaded Bulletin Board file, ___________________________________________________________ decompress the distribution file(s) (using whatever decompression program the Bulletin Board used to compress it) into a hard disk directory, change to that directory, and enter: INSTALL In either case, the INSTALL program will copy TGA onto floppy diskettes or your hard disk. Generally, if you are installing it for use on a floppy disk system, you will install TGA on the "B" drive, and in the root (\) directory. For hard disk installation, you will generally install it on the "C" drive, and in the "\TGA" directory. If you had previously installed TGA on your hard disk and wish to reinstall the new version in the same directory, the installation program will delete the earlier version of the TGA software before copying the new version. Naturally, any grading files you have will be left intact and unharmed. Next, you need to print your file of documentation. To do that, ready your PC printer (power it off, adjust the paper, and power it on). Use the DOS PRINT command (or any similar print utility) to print the file named TGA.DOC. [If you installed TGA on your hard disk, then you will find the documentation file on the disk and path where you installed the TGA software. If you installed TGA on four standard density (360K) 5 5 floppy diskettes, the documentation file will be on the fourth diskette created by INSTALL.] Printing the documentation will take a while to complete because it prints about 60 sheets of paper. But you just can't expect to run the program without reading the manual. If you have the patience to read the documentation on your monitor, you might want to try Vern Buerg's excellent shareware text display program (LIST.COM), available from Mr. Buerg directly or from most Bulletin Boards and Shareware Distributors. Please note: The TGA.DOC documentation file uses underlining. Your PC's printer needs to be in the mode which does not do an automatic linefeed on a carriage return. If the printed manual does not seem to be underlining properly (in other words, the underline is on a separate line below the text) then your PC is probably doing an automatic linefeed after the carriage return. This option can be changed on most printers, either through resetting the switch or console settings, or through sending the printer a command. Check your printer manual for the specifics on your printer. Unless you are already familiar with TGA, read at least the first part of the TGA Manual. Then, return to your computer and work through a few of the examples. Voila! You're ready to use TGA for the real thing. NOTE: Keep the original Grading Assistant distribution diskettes in a ____ safe place. Changing the Printer Setup __________________________ TGA is configured to run with an Epson FX or compatible printer attached to your primary parallel port (referred to as LPT1). If your printer is not compatible with an Epson FX or uses a different parallel port, don't worry. TGA has a special feature (the TGAPRINT program) that lets you tell TGA about the printer controls and port your printer uses instead. To do this, first get out your printer manual and turn to the sections that tell you about software printer commands. Most of these will be two or more control characters, such as the ESCAPE and "P" characters to tell your printer to use the Pica font. You will need to know the exact control characters (expressed as decimal integers) that your printer uses to set: Pica font, page length, line spacing, left and right margins, and any other special printer characteristics you need. If you have a dual floppy disk system, put the installed TGA diskette _____________________________________ _________ #4 in drive A: and enter these commands: A: TGAPRINT Follow the instructions to establish your printer codes. Next, put the installed TGA diskette #1 in drive B: and enter: _________ 6 6 COPY A:PRINTER.TGA B: Repeat this step for installed TGA diskette #2 and #3, placing each in _________ turn in the B: drive and executing the COPY command. If you have a hard disk system, switch to the disk and path that ______________________________ contains TGA (use the DOS CD command) and enter: TGAPRINT Regardless of which type of computer system you have, you will be prompted to enter your printer's control character codes to set the following: - 66 lines per page (the normal size for 8-1/2 x 11 paper) - Pica font (10 letters per inch, fixed character size) - left margin of 0 (on some printers, this must be "1") - right margin of 80 - 6 vertical lines per vertical inch (the normal print size) and - any other special printer characteristics you always want to use (such as bold printing). This one is optional; you may not need to use it. You will also be asked whether your printer uses continuous sheets of paper (the typical case) or single sheets (such as an option of the IBM ProPrinter and some letter quality printers). Finally, you will be asked which of the three parallel ports (LPT1, LPT2, or LPT3) has the printer TGA should use. As you are running TGAPRINT, you must respond to each of the six prompts by typing zero or more sets of decimal integers. (NOTE: You do __ not enter the hexadecimal value for printer characters. You enter the ___ decimal value.) Press ESCAPE for each line when there are no further numbers to enter for it. For example, to enter the printer command ESCAPE + "P" (for Epson's Pica fonts) you would type: 27 <then press ENTER> 80 <then press ENTER> <press ESCAPE> because "27" is the decimal code for ESCAPE, "80" is the decimal code for "P", and the final ESCAPE signals that there are no more codes to enter for this printer command. This may seem a little confusing, but the owners manual for your printer should help you pick the right codes. After entering these printer control codes, TGAPRINT will ask you two more questions. (1) Does your printer use continuous-feed paper, or must you feed it one sheet at a time? Respond by pressing 'C' for continuous-feed paper, or 'S' for single-sheet feed. (2) To which of 7 7 the parallel ports is your printer attached? Respond by pressing the number (1, 2, or 3) of the parallel port. After running TGAPRINT, you will be asked if you want to save the changes you just made. You respond with Y--for yes, or N--for no, and the program reacts accordingly. TGAPRINT can be run as many times as you wish. Each time you run it, it starts with the printer codes you saved the last time. All of these printer codes are stored in a small file named PRINTER.TGA. If you ever wish to eliminate the PRINTER.TGA file (to use TGA's default printer controls), you can erase it safely because you can always rebuild PRINTER.TGA by re-running TGAPRINT. If you do not run TGAPRINT, then TGA assumes that your printer uses the following control commands: +------------------------------------------------------+ Type of printer control Command | | |------------------------------------------------------| 66 lines per page 27, 67, 66 | | Pica font (10 cpi) 27, 80 | | Left margin = 0 27, 108, 0 | | Right margin = 80 27, 81, 80 | | 6 lines per vertical inch 27, 65, 12 | | Continuous-feed paper | | Printer connected to LPT1 | | +------------------------------------------------------+ Please note that many printers use different control commands than these. If you notice that the first page of a series of printed reports has extraneous characters (perhaps "A", "B", "C", "P", or "Q") then your printer differs from the Epson FX standard. In that case, you will need to run TGAPRINT to properly configure TGA for your printer. If your reports seem to break for pages incorrectly, you may need to run TGAPRINT to set the "6 lines per vertical inch" properly. The "12" in the Epson FX command means 12/72 = 1/6 inch per line. Many printers use 60ths, rather than 72nds, for this command. In that case, you would be printing at 12/60 = 1/5 inch per line, and you might experience page overflows on your printed reports. You would correct this by changing the 6 lines per inch printer command to be "12, 65, 10". Some printers also use "27, 50" for 6 lines per inch. If you wish to print copies of screen graphics displayed using the TGAGRAPH program, you must either have a graphics screen-print program that works with your display and adapter, or your PC must support the dot matrix graphics commands used by either the Epson 9-pin printers (which many 24-pin Epson-compatible printers also support) or the IBM ProPrinter 9-pin printers. Due to the variety of printer graphics formats in use, only these two printer families are supported in this version of TGAGRAPH. 8 8 Using Your Mouse ________________ The Grading Assistant recognizes your Microsoft or compatible (Logitech, for example) mouse. Your mouse driver (the MOUSE.COM program or MOUSE.SYS) should have already been loaded before you run TGA. TGA supports either keystrokes, mouse movement and button clicks, or a mixture of both. The following section describes how to use your mouse with TGA. Thereafter in this document, no references are made to mice -- even though your mouse will work with everything in TGA. The first thing to know is that TGA recognizes mouse movement any time the mouse cursor is visible on the screen. During the entry of information in response to a specific prompt, the mouse is disabled. Press the left mouse button (meaning a press and release) to "select" the item on which the mouse cursor is resting. Where it makes logical sense, selecting an item will perform the same function as though you had highlighted it with the keyboard cursor, then pressed ENTER. Press the right button to "quit" or "escape" from the current activity. This has the same effect as if you pressed the ESCAPE key. Press both the left and right buttons simultaneously to display TGA's pop-up help menu. This has the same effect as if you pressed the F1 help key. TGA has two basic types of menus in which the mouse is useful. The typical "activity menu", such as the TGA Main Menu, simply has a list of actions. You can move the mouse cursor to hilight the desired action. Clicking the left button selects and executes the hilighted action. The Main Menu, End-of-Grading-Period Menu, and Utility Menu are all "activity menus". The mouse cursor is invisible on these menus, but the hilighted cursor bar shows you where the mouse is. The other type of TGA menu typically has a variety of places in which you can enter and display information. The Grading Menu and Scoring Menu are examples of this type. In these menus, the mouse cursor will be visible as a solid, non-blinking block. As you move the mouse, the mouse cursor moves around the screen in a similar manner. When you move the mouse to a data entry location and click the left button, TGA allows you to enter data in that area. Or, if you move the mouse cursor to one of the action key definitions at the bottom of the menu and click the left button, TGA will execute the action as though you had pressed that action key. For menus in which the amount of data that can be displayed is larger than the display screen, you can move the mouse cursor to the left, top, right, or bottom edge of the menu area and click the left mouse button. TGA will respond as though you had pressed the corresponding Back Tab (mouse cursor on left edge), Page Up (mouse cursor on top edge), Tab (mouse cursor on right edge), or Page Down (mouse cursor on bottom edge). The best way to learn what you can do with the mouse is to simply move it and click the buttons while in a TGA menu. If you click the button in an undefined area of the menu, TGA will simply ignore it. 9 9 TGA has been tested with both the Microsoft two-button mouse and the Logitech three-button mouse. If your brand of mouse is not sufficiently compatible with the Microsoft standard driver, or if you have an old version of the mouse driver, then TGA may have problems handling your mouse. In that case, you can either contact the vendor of your mouse for an updated driver, or you can use the normal cursor and keyboard keys rather than your mouse. The presence of a mouse on your system in no way prevents you from using the normal keystrokes available to people without a mouse. The rest of this documentation will not make reference to using a mouse because it makes the manual much harder to read if every section ____ must describe how to execute commands with and without a mouse. But mouse fans take heart; TGA gives you full support anyway. Telling TGA The Disk/Directory to Use for Data ______________________________________________ The Grading Assistant is like most PC programs. It presumes that the data files it processes (that is, your grading information files) are located in the "current DOS directory." So, if you don't tell TGA anything to the contrary, the program looks for grade files on the same disk and in the same directory as your program file. However, if you're familiar with DOS then you know that you can establish a "PATH" statement (usually in your AUTOEXEC.BAT program) to tell DOS where to look for programs. If you are running DOS version 3.0 or later and the disk/path that contains TGA is in your PATH statement, then you can start TGA from almost anywhere by simply typing the program name. TGA will determine where the program is stored on your system and change to that directory first. If you are running DOS version 2.1, then DOS itself does not support the ability for TGA to determine its disk/path location unless it is executed from the current disk/path. For a typical floppy disk system, DOS will look first in the "root directory" of your primary diskette drive ("A:\"). For a hard disk system, this is usually the TGA subdirectory of your primary hard disk drive ("C:\TGA"). However, many people like to keep their data files on a different disk or in a different directory than their programs. This makes it easier to backup the data files without also backing up the programs. There are two ways for you to tell TGA where to find your data files. One way is to specify the disk drive letter and path when you define your grading files in the Scoring Menu (in the main TGA menu). If, for example, you entered "B:\1ENGL" as a grading file name in the Scoring Menu, then TGA would look for a grading file named "1ENGL" stored in the root directory of your "B:" diskette. Another way for you to tell TGA about your data disk and directory is to identify it when you start the program. This is the easiest way. When you execute The Grading Assistant, you can name the desired data disk and directory on the command line. The DOS command would look like this: 10 10 TGA disk/path _________ Where disk/path is the standard DOS file path. For example, you might _________ begin executing TGA by entering the following command: TGA B:\ The result is that TGA would look for your data files on the "B:" disk and in the root ("\") directory. If you give TGA an invalid disk/path name, it will simply ignore it and use the program disk/path instead. Either way of defining the location of your data files is OK. The second way is probably easier, though. You can also change the data file disk/path during a TGA session by going to the TGA DOS Utility Menu and selecting the menu item to change directories. The main TGA menu always tells you the name of the current data disk/path. Regardless of where TGA finds its own programs and your data files, when the program ends, you will remain in the DOS directory where you originally started. Using Colors ____________ TGA does its best to "guess" about your PC's display adapter and monitor. For most standard equipment, TGA's guess will be the right one. But for some unusual systems, such as an adapter that is capable of displaying color but is connected to a monochrome monitor, you may need to tell TGA which type of system you have. So, in addition to telling TGA your data disk/path on the command line, you can also pass a "switch" that tells TGA about your display system. You tell TGA either "/C" for a color system or "/M" for a monochrome system. Here are examples of valid parameters: TGA C:\TGA /C Tells TGA to use C:\TGA for your data files, and to force TGA to treat your PC as having a color display system. TGA /M Tells TGA to use the current directory for your data files, and to force TGA to treat your PC as having a monochrome system. TGA D:\GRADES Tells TGA to use D:\GRADES for your data files, and to "guess" your display system. Distribution Information ________________________ The Grading Assistant is not "public domain software" (that is, ___ software donated to the public for free use). It is, instead, "shareware" (that is, copyright software which users may evaluate for free, but they must pay for it if they continue to use it). You may 11 11 try this program without obligation or cost and evaluate it for your use. If you decide to keep the software or continue to use it after a 30-day evaluation period, you must register your copy with the ____ program's author by sending in the registration fee and form at the front of this document. If you do not intend to continue using the software, simply stop using it. If you aren't familiar with the shareware concept, this paragraph gives you a quick summary. You wouldn't buy a new car without test driving it first, but many commercial software companies ask you to buy their programs before you use them. Somehow, that doesn't seem fair. So the concept of shareware was designed to enable you to try the program first, to evaluate it at your leisure, and then to pay for it if you decide to use it. Shareware is based on trust; only you will know if you don't pay for what you use. But when you consider that shareware is typically very inexpensive and brings you programs that otherwise would be too expensive to be marketable, paying for it is just good sense. The alternative is to deal with the companies that make you pay higher prices up front. There are a variety of programs that masquerade as shareware, but aren't. One category is the demonstration. This is a nonfunctional _____________ program that shows you what the program can do, but its only purpose is to be an advertisement for the product. Another category is called (by its detractors) crippleware. This is software which is incomplete. ___________ The crippleware author wishes to give you enough of a product to evaluate it, but crucial portions of the program (perhaps the ability to store more than 20 records) are omitted to force you to pay for it before it is fully functional. A third category is annoyware. It is _________ shareware that periodically displays messages, delays processing, stops running, or annoys you in other ways until you register the program to receive a version without the annoying side effects. The Grading Assistant is true shareware. It is fully functional; it ____ has no annoying features to remind you to register. It is priced so inexpensively that there is no reason not to register it and receive both the current version and future support from the author. (Try finding even trivial commercial software products for $20.) Some software surveys indicate that less than ten percent of the people who use shareware actually pay for it. That's a shame, since many hours of development go into shareware, and authors deserve to be compensated for their work. These diskettes and the programs and documentation on them are not copy protected (that is, designed or written in such a way that it is difficult to make copies of them). There are no "time bombs" which make the program self-destruct after a set number of uses. The author's purposes in offering this program through the SHAREWARE distribution method are to reach a wider audience of PC users and to offer this quality software product to you at a reasonable price. $20 is a small price to pay for the hours of work you will save if you use The Grading Assistant to calculate your grades. 12 12 OK, end of advertisement. It's up to you to evaluate TGA and register if you continue use it after a 30-day evaluation period. Did You Get Everything? _______________________ TGA is normally distributed either by shareware distribution firms, such as PC-SIG or Peoples Choice, or through electronic Bulletin Board services. If you received TGA from the author or a shareware firm, you should have received two dual-sided, dual density (DSDD) diskettes containing both your TGA software and documentation in a compressed format. The first step is to install the TGA program. Display or print the README.TGA file on the TGA distribution diskette for instructions on how to do this. If you installed your files for use on a dual floppy disk system with dual density (DSDD) diskettes, you will now have four new diskettes. If you installed TGA on your hard disk or on a high density diskette, you will have all of the TGA software and documentation on a single disk and directory. Your documentation file is stored in a special format (sometimes called TTY, for teletype) ready to be printed on almost any text printer. The only files you absolutely need to run The Grading Assistant are "TGA.EXE" and "TGA.HLP". If you wish to run the graphics programs, you will need "TGAGRAPH.EXE", "TGAGRAPH.HLP", and the appropriate graphics interface file ("*.BGI") for your PC. To run the Student Information programs, you will need "TGAINFO.EXE" and "TGAINFO.HLP". To change printer default information, you will need "TGAPRINT.EXE". The following is a description of the primary TGA files you will find before and after installation: Files on Distribution Diskette #1 _________________________________ INSTALL.EXE This program copies TGA onto a floppy or hard disk PC system. LHARC.EXE This is the copyright (C) product of Haruyasu Yoshizaki. It is used to decompress the TGA files on the distribution diskette. The INSTALL.EXE program uses LHARC. You do not need it to use TGA after it is installed. (This file is also on Diskette #2.) TGA.LZH This compressed file contains the following two files: _______ TGA.EXE This is the main program for The Grading Assistant. TGA.HLP This is the compressed Help file for TGA. 13 13 TGAGRAPH.LZH This compressed file contains the following three file ____________ groups: TGAGRAPH.EXE This program displays simple bar graphs of your current grade averages, or the grade averages for a single prior grading period. TGAGRAPH is optional, and it is only useful if your PC has a supported graphics card and monitor. TGAGRAPH.HLP This is the compressed Help file for TGAGRAPH. *.BGI These are a series of graphics interface files. They are the copyright products of Borland International, and they are included with The Grading Assistant under the terms of Borland's license with the TGA author. You need the BGI file which is appropriate for your PC's graphics card/monitor if you plan to run the TGAGRAPH program. Files on Distribution Diskette #2 _________________________________ README.TGA This is a short file of information about how to install and use The Grading Assistant. WHATSNEW.TGA This is a short file of information about changes in the program with each recent version. TGAINFO.LZH This compressed file contains the following two files: ___________ TGAINFO.EXE This is a program which allows you to maintain an information record for each student. The record contains the name of the student's parents, the student's mailing address, and telephone numbers for the parents. TGAINFO.HLP This is the compressed Help file for TGAINFO. TGA2DIFF.LZH This compressed file contains the following two files: ____________ TGA2DIFF.EXE This is a program which allows you to export your grading file data for use in another PC program. The output file format is the data interchange file format (DIFF). TGA2DIFF.HLP This is the compressed Help file for TGA2DIFF. 14 14 TGADOC.LZH This compressed file contains the following two files: __________ TGAPRINT.EXE This is an optional program to define your printer's codes if they are not fully compatible with the Epson FX printer. TGA.DOC This is the documentation for the programs. Display it on your PC or print it on your printer. Program Limits ______________ The limits of The Grading Assistant program are: * up to 12 grading periods per grading year * up to 15 different classes per grading period * up to 45 students per class up to 42 grades per class, per grading period * up to 12 different categories of grades, each with its own grade average percentage, per class. For example, the grade categories for a 1st period English class might be: 15% Writing Assignments 25% Spelling and Vocabulary Assignments 25% Tests and Quizzes 35% Special Projects * the program assumes a letter grading system of "A", "B", "C", "D", and "F", where every letter grade except "F" can be modified by a "+" or "-" indicator. * the program supports both grade averaging (using weighted categories) and point averaging. * the program assumes a 100-point grading scale, although individual grade scores can range from 0 through 999. Getting Started _______________ Before you try The Grading Assistant, you should first know how to get out of it. The main Grading Assistant menu has six options from which you can select. One of them is ESCAPE. Pressing the ESCAPE key from the main menu will end the program. From other menus, such as the GRADING and SCORING programs (the first two items in the main TGA menu), you press the ESCAPE key to end the program and return to the main menu. In general, ESCAPE is a good key to try when you want to stop what you are doing in The Grading Assistant and return to an earlier menu, or 15 15 to DOS. If you are being prompted by TGA to enter some information, simply pressing the ENTER key without typing any data will often signal TGA that you want to exit. If ESCAPE fails to get you out and you can't figure out what else to do, try pressing the Control, Alternate, and Delete keys simultaneously. Those three keys pressed together will restart your computer. Or, if you're truly desperate, press the re-boot button (many PCs have these on the front of the chassis) or turn off the power switch on your PC. Each of these is successively more drastic. You may actually lose some of the data you had keyed but not yet saved, depending on what went wrong. But please be assured that in hundreds of hours of actual use and testing of The Grading Assistant program there has not been a single instance in which TGA destroyed any data. From most of the TGA menus, you can press the F1 (HELP) key to display a short help message. This message will "pop-up" over the current screen. Use the Page Up/Down keys to view the text, which will usually be one to three screens of information. Press ESCAPE when you are through viewing the help and want to return to the menu. To begin The Grading Assistant, you must first be in DOS mode. "Boot" (that is, start-up) your PC as you normally do. On a floppy disk system, you boot the PC by putting your DOS disk in the "A:" drive and turning the power on. On a hard disk system, you boot the PC by making sure your floppy disk doors are open, and powering on the PC. If you have a floppy disk system, remove and put aside your DOS ________________________________ diskette, and insert The Grading Assistant installed diskette #1 in _________ your "A:" drive after you see the "A>" prompt on the screen. [The "A:" drive is usually the one on top, or on the left, if you have two diskette drives.] If you have a hard disk system, change your hard disk subdirectory to ______________________________ the one with The Grading Assistant installed in it. For example, if you installed The Grading Assistant program on your "C:" drive and in the "TGA" directory, then when you see the "C>" prompt on the screen, you should enter: CD \TGA Regardless of whether you have a floppy or hard disk system, to start The Grading Assistant, type: TGA disk/path colorswitch _________ ___________ (The disk/path is optional and allows you to tell TGA the disk and _________ path of your grading files. The colorswitch is also optional, and it ___________ can be "/C" for color or "/M" for monochrome display.) The PC screen will clear and The Grading Assistant main menu will appear: 16 16 The Grading Assistant -- MAIN MENU __________________________________ +----------------------------------+ Main Menu | | +----------------------------------+ +----------------------------------+ Enter or change class grades | | Define grade computation methods | | Reports menu | | End-of-Grading-Period menu | | Utility menu | | +----------------------------------+ You can use the up/down cursor arrows (or your mouse) to select the desired option, then press ENTER (or click the left mouse button) to execute it. Or, you can press the highlighted letter (often the first letter) of the desired menu item to perform the specified function. Press ESCAPE to quit and return to DOS mode. The following is a summary of each menu item: #1 This is used either to create a new class grading file or to enter, change, or delete grades in an existing file. This is the action you will use to enter and edit student grades for your classes. The information in these grading files is used when you display or print the current grade average reports. #2 This is used to enter or edit the grade average computation percentages for each of your grade files. It also allows you to define the numerical grade ranges which correspond to each letter grade. The information in this file is used to compute class averages when you display or print the current grade average reports. #3 This is used to jump to the Reports Menu. All of The Grading Assistant reports can be found in that menu. There are so many reports that they cannot fit on a single menu. #4 This is used to jump to the End-of-Grading-Period Menu. That menu allows you to save the grade averages for you students at the end of one grading period, while you prepare your grading files for the start of the new grading period. #5 This is used to jump to the Utility Menu. From that menu you can: erase files, rename files, copy files, make backup copies of your data, restore your data files from earlier backup copies, change your data disk/path, list the names of files in the current data directory, or temporarily exit to DOS. (Notice that the line at the bottom of the TGA main menu display tells you the name of the current disk and path on which TGA will look for your grading files.) 17 17 Your First Lesson _________________ Let's begin by drawing an analogy between TGA and your current (manual) grade book. You start the school year with several classes. In your grade book you keep each class in a separate section, often separated by tabs or dividers. With TGA you will keep each class in a separate grading file on your disk. (Five classes means five grading files.) What information does your grade book have? It probably has the class subject, the class period, your name, the names of all of the class students, and spaces to record attendance and grades. With TGA your grading files will keep the same sort of information. You can even use TGA to print a class roster for taking attendance. How do you begin the school year by getting your grade book ready? You probably start by filling out the information for each class. You enter the subject, period, and other information on grade sheets for each class. You write or type in the names of students for each class, and you decide how to score each class. With TGA you do the same things. You use a program called the Grading Menu to enter information for each class. You use a program called the Scoring Menu to tell TGA which classes you have, how you will score class averages, and how TGA should use numerical grade ranges to assign letter grades (for example, you might tell TGA that a grade in the range 94-96 is an "A"). During the school grading period you give assignments and grade papers. Unfortunately, TGA can't help you very much there. For assignments and grading papers you are on your own. But instead of entering your grades manually into a grade book, you can enter the grades for each class into your PC using the TGA Grading Menu. Then, at any time during the grading period, you can either print a report or display on the screen the current grade averages for any or all classes. You can look at the grades for just one class if you want, or for all of them. Naturally, TGA shows you the grade averages for each of your grading categories (you defined these earlier using the Scoring Menu). TGA shows you the overall grade average for each student, both as a numerical score and a letter grade. It also gives you a breakdown by class of how many students made A's, B's, C's, D's, and F's. If you teach grade school and need to send home interim reports to the parents, TGA can help you here, too. All you have to do is tell TGA the numerical grade below which you want an interim report, and it will print a short note for each student whose grade average is below that score. TGA even has an option that lets you write individual comments for each student if you wish. You can also use the TGAINFO program in conjunction with the Interim Report to print gummed labels for mailing your reports to your students' parents. At the end of the grading period you normally get out your trusty calculator and a lot of scratch paper to do the grade averages. But with TGA, all it takes is pressing a few keys and you have complete 18 18 grade average reports. This is where TGA really saves you a great deal of time and effort. At the end of the grading period, you use TGA to save the averages for that period because TGA will compute year-to- date and end-of-year grade averages for each class as well. Now that you've heard the basics, you have a choice. You can work through a step by step set of three exercises, or you can skip to the next section. If you're the sort of person who is comfortable with PC programs, skip the rest of this section and pick up the reading at the "Normal Processing" heading. If you want to work through a few lessons, read on. Let's start at the beginning for your first lesson. In this lesson, whenever the instructions tell you to Enter something, that means you _____ should type the letters shown and then press the Enter key. On some PCs this key is labeled ENTER or it has a downward left arrow on it. When the instructions tell you to Press something, that means you _____ should only press the key(s) shown. No need to depress the ENTER key when the instructions say "Press". Your PC has many special keys. The ones you will use most often are the Escape key, the ENTER key, the INSERT key, the DELETE key, and the function keys (abbreviated F1 through F10). When you see these keys referenced in the following example, they mean you should press that key. For example, when you see "ESCAPE" then you press the Escape key; you don't type the letters E S C A P E. Lesson 1 - Setting up a Grading File ____________________________________ In this lesson you will learn how to set up a single grading file, which we will name SAMPLE. We will assume that, for a hard disk system, your TGA programs and data are on the C: disk in the \TGA path. The SAMPLE file is for Ms. Smith's first period English class, which has only five students (doesn't she wish!). This lesson shows you the skills you need to set up grading files for each of your own classes. Start The Grading Assistant: ___________________________ (on a floppy disk system) 1. Enter TGA TGA (on a hard disk system) 1a. Enter CD C:\TGA CD C:\TGA 1b. Enter TGA TGA Select the Grading Menu: 2. Press ENTER ENTER _______________________ Name the grading file: 3a. Enter SAMPLE SAMPLE _____________________ 3b. Press Y Y Enter the class description: 4a. Enter Ms. Smith Ms. Smith ___________________________ 4b. Enter English English 4c. Enter 1st 1st 4d. Enter G G 19 19 Enter the class students: 5a. Enter Able, Mary Able, Mary ________________________ 5b. Enter Baker, Bill Baker, Bill 5c. Enter Carson, Susan Carson, Susan 5d. Enter Davidson, Allen Davidson, Allen 5e. Enter Elder, Dana Elder, Dana 5f. Press Enter Enter Note: After each student's name you will be prompted to enter an optional student identifier. Exit from the Grading Menu: 6a. Press Escape Escape __________________________ 6b. Press Y Y 6c. Press N N Exit from the TGA program: 7. Press ESCAPE ESCAPE _________________________ Lesson 2 - Defining The Grading Information ___________________________________________ In this lesson we will define our criteria for computing class averages for the SAMPLE grading file. We have decided to use the grade averaging method, with weighted categories. Daily grades and test grades will each account for one-half (50%) of the final average for each student. To be generous, though, we have decided to drop the lowest daily grade before we average. You would use the same set of skills to define the grade computation for each of your own classes. Start The Grading Assistant: 1. See Lesson 1 ___________________________ Select the Scoring Menu: 2a. Press down arrow down arrow _______________________ 2b. Press ENTER ENTER Enter the grading file name: 3. Press Y to load created grade Y ___________________________ file names Define the grading categories: 4a. Press F1 F1 _____________________________ 4b. Enter DAILY DAILY 4c. Enter 50 50 4d. Enter 1 1 4e. Enter TEST TEST 4f. Enter 50 50 4g. Enter 0 0 4h. Press ESCAPE ESCAPE Define Letter Grade Ranges: 5a. Press F2 F2 __________________________ 5b. Enter grade letters/ranges Exit from the Scoring Menu: 6a. Press Escape Escape __________________________ 6b. Press Y Y Exit from the TGA program: 7. See Lesson 1 _________________________ 20 20 Lesson 3 - Entering Grades __________________________ In this lesson we will enter two sets of grades for Ms. Smith's English class (remember that we named the grading file "SAMPLE"). The first set is for a daily grade, verb worksheet, given on October 1, 1988. The second set of grades is for a pop quiz given on October 2, 1988. Both were graded using a 100% base. These are the skills you would use to enter grades for students in each of your own classes. Start The Grading Assistant: 1. See Lesson 1 ___________________________ Select the Grading Menu: 2. Press ENTER ENTER _______________________ Select the Grading File Name: 3. Enter SAMPLE SAMPLE ____________________________ Enter the first set of grades: 4a. Press F4 F4 _____________________________ 4b. Press ENTER ENTER 4c. Enter 10/1/88 10/1/88 4d. Enter DAILY DAILY 4e. Enter Verb Worksheet Verb Worksheet 4f. Enter 93 93 4g. Enter 99 99 4h. Enter 87 87 4i. Enter 82 82 4j. Enter 100 100 4k. Listen for the "beep" Enter the second set of grades: 5a. Press RIGHT ARROW RIGHT ARROW ______________________________ 5b. Press F4 F4 5c. Press ENTER ENTER 5d. Enter 10/2/88 10/2/88 5e. Enter TEST TEST 5f. Enter Pop Quiz Pop Quiz 5g. Invent and Enter 5 grades 5h. Listen for the "beep" Exit from the Grading Menu: 6. See Lesson 1 __________________________ Exit from the TGA Program: 7. See Lesson 1 _________________________ Congratulations! You have just completed the basic skills you will use to enter TGA grades and define grade average computation. There is much more to learn to master the details. But for now, you know the basics. Start TGA again and press item #3 from the main menu to select the Reports Menu. From there, press ENTER to select the Current Grading Period reports. Display your grade averages or print a copy on your PC printer using the Averages by Class/Student report. (NOTE: If you ____ performed these lessons, then you created a dummy grading file named SAMPLE which you may wish to erase. Use the DOS ERASE command to delete SAMPLE. You will also need to erase or update your SCORING MENU file (SCORING.!!!) to delete the SAMPLE file entry when you are ready to enter your real grade file names and scoring criteria.) 21 21 Normal Processing _________________ The following describes the steps you will usually follow to run The Grading Assistant: 1. The first time you use The Grading Assistant, you should select menu item #1 from The Grading Assistant main menu to create a grading file for each of your classes. For example, if you teach four classes of French, then you will create four grading files - - one for each class. In DOS, a file identifier has the following format: [drive:][path]filename[.extension] The [drive:] identifies by letter the disk drive on which your data will be kept. Normally, drive identifiers are "A:", "B:", "C:", or "D:", where "A" and "B" drives are for floppy diskettes and "C" and "D" are for hard disks. Note that the drive identifier always ends in a colon (:). When you do not specify which drive you wish, DOS assumes that you want to use the current one (usually "A:" if you have a floppy disk system or "C:" if you have a hard disk system). Entering the drive is optional unless your current one is not the one you want TGA to use. The [path] identifies the disk directory, if any, on which your data will be kept. Floppy disk systems rarely use paths; hard disk systems almost always do. Disk paths must be specifically created (by using the DOS MKDIR (make directory) command). The path identifier always ends in a backslash (\). When you do not specify which path you wish, DOS assumes that you want to use the current one. On a floppy disk system, you rarely worry about paths. On a hard disk system, you generally use paths to separate different types of programs and data files. Entering the path is optional unless your current one is not the one you want TGA to use. In most cases, you will enter nothing for the TGA path. The filename is a name of your own invention, composed of letters and digits, from one to eight characters in length. You must enter a filename since, without one, DOS has no way to know which file you wish to use. Don't get too fancy with file names. The simpler they are, the more likely you will remember them. For example, FRENCH1 is a better name for a first period French class than F1S102A (for French 1, Section 102-A). Entering a file name is required. ________ The [.extension] identifies an optional extension to the file name. It can be from one to three characters in length, and is preceded by a period (.). Extensions let you group files of a particular type. For example, you might give all of your grading files an extension of ".GRD". Like the filename, the extension is composed of letters and digits. The extension is not required. If 22 22 you leave it out, then DOS simply leaves the extension blank. Normally, you can omit this for TGA data files. The following are examples of valid DOS file identifiers: _____ B:SAMPLE C:\DIR1\DIR1A\TEST EXAMPLE.TGA The following file identifiers are invalid: _______ B:ENGLISHLIT (Name longer than 8 letters) C:\DIR1\ (No filename was given) B:\DATA\LANG+ENG.GRD (Illegal character [+] in filename) If you are not familiar with using DOS paths and disk subdirectories, don't worry. You don't need them to run The Grading Assistant. If you are uncomfortable with DOS file identifiers then, to be safe, stick with simple file names of eight characters or less, composed of letters (A-Z) and digits (0-9). In any case, give your files names which are easy to remember, such as "1SCIENCE" for "1st period Science." A grading file consists of class information (teacher's name, the subject, and the period), student names, and grade information (initially, students have no grades). 2. During the current grading period, as students receive grades for their work, you should enter student grades once a week (or once a day if you are truly industrious) by selecting item #1 (the Grading Menu) from the main menu. You enter student grades into the Grading Menu much the same way as you enter grades manually into your grade book. 3. When you are ready to print a report of grade averages for the first time, you should first select item #2 (the Scoring Menu) from the main menu. You will be asked if you want to automatically load the names of grading files you created using the Grading Menu. Normally, the answer is Yes. After loading the grading file names, you can enter the scoring percentages you plan to use for each class. You should also define the range of scores for letter grades. You need not run the Scoring Menu program again unless the names of grading files, the class scoring information, or the letter grade ranges change. 4. To display/print a report of current student averages any time during the grading period, select item #3 (the Reports Menu) from the main menu. This will display the available reports. Most of these can either be printed or displayed on your PC. If, for example, you select the current grading average report, you will have an opportunity to select the classes you want to display or print, in case you don't want to see all of them. The student grade averages for each grading file you selected will be displayed on your monitor or printed on a single sheet of paper. The report shows student names and averages for each category, 23 23 and gives a distribution count of the student scores for that class by letter grades. Often, it is a good idea to first display the grade report before actually printing it. Entering and Editing Grades ___________________________ By selecting item #1 from the main Grading Assistant menu, you will run the grade entry/edit program. As the program starts, the PC screen will clear and The Grading Assistant GRADING MENU will appear. The Grading Assistant -- GRADING MENU _____________________________________ TEACHER: ______________ SUBJECT: ______________ +--DATE--+--TYPE--+----DESCRIPTION-----+ PERIOD: ____ | | | | GRADE AVG. METHOD: _ +---+-GRADES+---++--+---+-+-+---+-+++---+---+---+---+---+ |# |# |# |# |# |# |# |# |# |# |# |# |# |# | ##+------STUDENTS------+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+---+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--------------------+-------------------------------------------------------+ The first thing that will happen is that you will be prompted to enter the name of a grading file. If you want to create a new file, simply invent and enter a new file name. (Invent a name of eight or fewer letters or digits unless you are familiar with DOS file drive, path, and extension identifiers, then press ENTER.) If you want to edit or enter grades for an existing file, simply type the name of the previously created file and press ENTER. When you are creating a new file, it is a good idea to pick simple, unique file names. (I also recommend that you write them down somewhere convenient.) If you enter the name of a grading file which already exists, the information in that file will be retrieved and displayed in the menu on your screen. If you enter the name of a file which does not exist, the GRADING MENU program will ask you if you wish to create it. If you respond by pressing "Y", a new grading file will be created and you will be asked to enter student and class descriptions for it. If you press "N", you will be prompted to re-enter the file name you wish. 24 24 (Normally, you will use "N" only when you typed an incorrect file name by mistake.) What do you do if you can't remember the names of your grading files? Well, if you have already defined them in the SCORING Menu (by selecting item #2 from the main TGA menu), then you can enter "?" in response to the grading file name and TGA will pop-up a list of the defined files. Move the cursor up/down to the desired file name and press ENTER to select that grading file. Or, select EXIT to exit from the grading menu. NOTE: Since there are no restrictions in TGA (other than those imposed by DOS) about what you may name your grading files, this feature can only work by reading the names you have previously defined in the SCORING Menu. If you create a new grading file, the name of that file is stored in a special, temporary file named NEWFILES.TGA. Later, when you run the Scoring Menu (item #2 from the main menu), you will have the option to load the names of any newly created grading files. If you respond "Y" -- yes, load the grading file names -- then TGA will load them into empty file name spaces in your Scoring Menu. This is simply a time- saving measure to make it faster and easier to setup your grade computation data the first time. The information at the top left corner of the grading menu (TEACHER, SUBJECT, PERIOD, and GRADE AVERAGING METHOD) is called the class description. When you create a new grade file, you will automatically be prompted to enter this information. Thereafter, if you wish to change it, you can use the F3 key while in the GRADING MENU. The information at the bottom left of the menu is the list of student names. When you create a new grading file, you will automatically be prompted to enter up to 45 student names. Thereafter, if you wish to add, change, or delete a name from the GRADING MENU, just move the hilighted cursor to the same line (row) as the student name, and press F2 (to edit it), F6 (to insert a new name), or F7 (to delete the student from the class). Each student has an optional identification (ID) field. You don't have to use this, but it might be handy for recording the student record identifier used by your school (perhaps the Social Security Number). This ID is only used in one report -- the Current Grading Period: Post Grade Averages Report. That report, run from the Reports Menu, lists student grade averages by ID, rather than by name, so the instructor can post grades and retain student privacy. When you initially enter student names, or when you edit them by pressing F2 from the Grading Menu, you will be able to see and enter/change the student ID if desired. The information at the bottom right of the menu is the student grade area. You can enter a grade by merely moving the hilighted cursor (the hilighted block on the screen) to a student grade location (cell) and typing the grade. For example, to enter a grade of "100" you would position the cursor to where you want the grade entered, then type 25 25 "100". You can also use the F4 key from the GRADING MENU to enter an entire column of grades for your students. The information at the top right of the menu is the grade description. Each column of grades has a description (the date of the grade, a grade category used in computing student averages, and a short note you add to describe the grade activity). When you use the F4 key to enter a column of grades, you will automatically be prompted to enter the grade date, type, and description. Thereafter, you can change the description by moving the hilighted cursor to the desired grade column and pressing F1. Choosing a Grade Averaging Method _________________________________ The Grading Assistant support two separate types of grade averaging methods. The one you choose depends on how you prefer to grade. The default method is grade averaging. _______________ Grade Averaging: In this method, you identify one or more weighted _______________ grade categories. For example, you may decide that DAILY grades will be worth 50% of the semester grade, and TEST grades will also be worth 50%. You use TGA to enter the grades (each one is shown on the 100- point grading system) for each category. When TGA computes class and student averages it: 1) Averages the DAILY grades by adding them together and dividing by the number of grades. 2) Averages the TEST grades in the same manner. 3) Multiplies the student's DAILY average by the DAILY grade category weight (50% in this case). 4) Multiplies the TEST average in the same manner. 5) Adds the results of steps 3) and 4), above. That may sound a little confusing, so here is an example. Suppose John has two daily grades (100 and 90) and two test grades (90 and 80). In Step 1), we average the daily grades. The average of 100 and 90 is ( (100 + 90) / 2 ), which is 95. In Step 2), the average of 90 and 80 is 85. In Step 3), we multiply the DAILY average (95) by the DAILY category weight (50%), which gives us 47.5%. Doing the same in Step 4) for the TEST average (85) times the TEST category weight (50%), we get 42.5%. Last, we add the two percentages (47.5% + 42.5%), giving us the total grade average of 90%. Point Averaging: In the point averaging method, you still have grading _______________ categories, but they aren't weighted. Instead, you control the relative importance of each assignment by determining how many points it will be worth. For example, if a quiz is worth 20 points and a test is worth 100 points, then the test is five times as important as the quiz. For TGA to do point averaging, it simply adds the total number 26 26 of points the student scored, and divides by the total number of points possible, to get the grade average. For example, if John scored a total of 600 points out of a possible 800, his average is 600 / 800, or 75%. To tell TGA to use Grade Averaging for a particular class, just enter "G" for the grade averaging method. Conversely, to use point averaging, enter "P". Note that you cannot mix both types of averaging methods in a single class (that would be chaotic), but you can use different methods for different classes. In other words, your English class could use grade averaging while your math class used point averaging. Entering Class Description Information ______________________________________ When you create a new grading file, you will automatically be prompted to enter the name of the TEACHER, the SUBJECT, the class PERIOD, and the GRADE AVERAGING METHOD code. One by one, these fields will be hilighted. You simply type the information inside the hilighted area on the screen, and press ENTER for each one when it is complete. Use the BACKSPACE key to correct any typing errors. You can also use the left and right arrow keys, the HOME key, and the END key to position the cursor within the field you are typing. Pressing the DELETE key will remove the character directly over your cursor. Pressing INSERT will enable you to insert additional characters to the left of the cursor. Thereafter, any time you wish to change the class descriptive information from the GRADING MENU, just press F3. Entering Student Names ______________________ When you create a new grading file, you will automatically be prompted to enter the names of your students. One by one, a new area of the STUDENTS section will be hilighted. You simply type the name of the student and press ENTER. When there are no more student names to enter, just press ENTER without typing a name. This (pressing ENTER without typing anything) signals the GRADING MENU program that you don't wish to type any more student names for this grading file. Up to 45 student names can be entered in each grading file. Thereafter, to change a student name (for example, to correct a typographical error), simply move the hilighted cursor up or down the grade column, or use the Page Up/Down keys, so that the cursor is on the same line (row) as the name to be changed. Press F2 to hilight the name and edit it. NOTE: When you blank (erase) a student's name from a class, you automatically exclude the student's grades from the class average. The grades for that student are not deleted, however, as insurance against inadvertent student name deletion. So, if you unintentionally blank a student name, you can simply use F2 to retype it. Once the name is 27 27 present, the student will once again show up in your class average listings. Thus, a blank student name is different from using F7 to delete the student entirely. Pressing F5 from the Grading Menu will sort the student names alphabetically. NOTE: This is only useful if you have entered the student names in LAST-FIRST order (such as "Jones, Tom"). Pressing F6 from the Grading Menu will insert a blank student grade line ABOVE the row (student line) your cursor is on at the time. (If the program didn't insert the blank line ABOVE the current line, you couldn't add a line to the top of your class list.) This feature is useful for making room in your grade sheet for a new student, and putting that student in alphabetical order. (NOTE: You could achieve the same effect by adding the student to the end of your grading sheet, then using the SORTING function -- pressing F5 -- as described above.) Pressing F7 from the Grading Menu will delete the student on the line (row) your cursor is on at the time. As a safety check, the program will ask you to verify that you really want to do this. When you respond with a Y, for Yes, the student record will be deleted from this class. Entering Grading Information ____________________________ Grade descriptions are stored for each column of grades. The descriptions include: (1) the date of the grade, (2) the type (or category) of grade, and (3) a short descriptive note about the grade assignment. For example, a typical test grade might have this description: DATE: 12/25/87 TYPE: Test DESCRIPTION: Unit Test, CH. 2 You will automatically be prompted to enter grade descriptive information when you enter a column of grades using the F4 key. Thereafter, you can change this information by pressing the F1 key while the hilighted cursor is in the desired grade column. NOTE: It is important that you decide very early in the grading period about which grade TYPEs you will use in a class. For each of these TYPEs you must enter a grade average percentage (weight) later in the SCORING MENU program. If you use a grade TYPE not defined in the SCORING MENU, then when you run the current grade average report program you will see an error message listing the undefined grade type. 28 28 Entering Grades _______________ There are two ways to enter grades: a grade at a time, or a column at a time. The first way is used to enter or correct a single grade, such as entering a grade for a student who turned in his/her work late after you had already entered the grades for the rest of the class. The second way is used to enter a grade for every student in the class, such as entering yesterday's test grades for your 4th period science class. Cursor Movement: Move the hilighted cursor around the grade area of _______________ the screen by pressing the arrow keys. To go to the next screen of student grades, press the TAB key. To go to the previous screen of student grades, press the SHIFT and TAB keys simultaneously (called the BACK TAB). To go to the next screen of student names, press the PAGE UP or PAGE DOWN keys. To move the top left corner of the grade area, press HOME. To move to the bottom right corner of the grade area, press END. Entering a grade at a time: Move the hilighted cursor to the desired __________________________ student and grade, and type the numeric grade. To remove a grade completely, press the DEL key. NOTE: A grade of zero ("0") is absolutely not the same as a DELeted grade. DELeted grades show up as ___ blank (or empty) in the grade areas. Zero grades show up as "0". DELeted grades are ignored in computing averages. Zero grades count toward the student's average (in a strongly negative way). Entering a column of grades: This is the most typical method you will ___________________________ use to enter student grades. Move the hilighted cursor to a grade column which is blank (meaning that all of the students have no grades). Press F4. You will be prompted to enter the integer value of a perfect score. This will normally be "100" if you are working on a 100-point system. However, if you give a quiz with 38 questions and you want TGA to compute the percentile scores for you based on the number of questions each student got right, then you would enter "38". Next, you will be prompted to enter the grade descriptive information. Then, one by one, you will be prompted to enter a grade for each student. Enter the grade by typing the number (either the percentile score or the number of questions the student got right) and pressing ENTER. After grades have been entered for all students in the class, the GRADING MENU will "beep" to let you know you are finished entering the column of grades. This feature is included in case you are looking at your grade sheet, and not the screen, and you get ahead of yourself in typing grades. NOTE: You do not have to enter a grade for every student. If you ____ simply press the ENTER key without typing a grade, then the current grade for that student remains. NOTE: You can also use the F4 grade column entry feature to fill-in ____ missing grades in a column. Any student who already has a grade will be skipped. 29 29 Special Feature - Additions to Final Grade Average __________________________________________________ The Grading Assistant has a special feature that permits you to add one or more points to final student grade point averages for the grading period. Follow these steps to use this feature: 1) While you are in the Grading Menu for the class whose grades you want to adjust, move the cursor to any unused column of grades. Press F4 to tell TGA that you want to enter a column of grades. 2) Enter anything you want for the column's grade DATE and DESCRIPTION. But the FIRST letter of the grade TYPE must be a ____ plus sign (+). This plus sign tells TGA that this column represents additions to the final grading period average, rather _________ than a normal grade type. 3) Enter the number of points to add to each student's final average, just as though you were entering a normal grade. For students who do not get extra points, you can either enter a zero (0), or just press the ENTER key. This allows you to give each student a different number of extra credit points if you wish. When you run the current grade average report, you will see these extra credit points shown at the far right of the report. You can have more than one set of extra credit points during a grading period. They are simply accumulated and shown once in the reports. Special Feature - Extra Points for Specific Grade Types _______________________________________________________ The Grading Assistant allows you to add extra points to a particular grade type. This has the same effect as if you had simply added the points to an existing grade of that type. Follow these steps to use this feature: 1) While you are in the Grading Menu for the class whose grades you want to adjust, move the cursor to any unused column of grades. Press F4 to tell TGA that you want to enter a column of grades. 2) Enter the column's grade DATE and the grade TYPE to which you want to add extra credit points. For the grade DESCRIPTION, make sure the first two letters of the description are two plus signs (++). These dual plus signs tell TGA that this column represents additions to the grading period average for this grade TYPE. The _________ points you enter will simply be added to the total number of points for this grade type before the average is computed. For ______ example, if a student had ten DAILY grades and you added a special extra credit of 20 points to his DAILY score, you would have raised his overall DAILY grade by 2 points (20 total DAILY points divided by ten DAILY grades). Why two plus signs? This is simply a way to avoid the problem of ___ unintentionally entering a grade as extra credit. For example, if you entered a description of "+ and - problems" for a grade 30 30 column in your math class, you wouldn't want TGA to misinterpret your description and change the grades to extra credit points. On the other hand, you need to be careful when entering this type of extra credit. Suppose you intended to enter DAILY extra credit points, and your description was "+ Extra Credit Points" (instead of "++ Extra Credit Points"). Since you only entered one plus ___ sign, TGA would treat this as a DAILY grade. So, the ten points you wanted to give your students for extra credit would, instead, be treated as a daily grade of "10". That would certainly harm their grades rather than helping them! The bottom line: be careful with extra credit points! TGA may misunderstand your intent if your description has too many or two few plus signs. 3) Enter the number of points to add to each student's grade type score, just as though you were entering a normal grade. For students who do not get extra points, you can either enter a zero (0), or just press the ENTER key. This allows you to give each student a different number of extra credit points if you wish. Naturally, any or all of your normal grade types can have extra credits added, and you can add more than one set of extra credit points per grade type. When you run the current grade average report, you will see these extra credit points reflected in the students' average grades for that type. Entering Scoring Information ____________________________ When you select item #2 from the main Grading Assistant menu, you will display the SCORING MENU. Your PC screen will clear, and you will see the following menu: The Grading Assistant -- SCORING MENU _____________________________________ +----GRADE-FILES-----+ +--TYPE--++PCT++DROP#+ GRADE >= | | | || || | A+ __ | | | || || | A __ | | | || || | A- __ | | | || || | B+ __ | | | || || | B __ | | | || || | B- __ | | | || || | C+ __ | | | || || | C __ | | | || || | C- __ | | | || || | D+ __ | | | || || | D __ | | +--------++---++-----+ D- __ | | F __ | | | | +--------------------+ 31 31 The GRADE FILES section of the menu can have the names of up to fifteen grading files (which you created using the #1 item from The Grading Assistant main menu). The TYPE section of the menu lists up to 12 grade types for each of the grading files. Each grade TYPE has a grading percent (PCT) value and a low-score DROP indicator. Your TYPE values should match the grade TYPE you entered when you keyed grades into the grading file. The percentage values are defined by you, according to your grade weighting scheme. The DROP indicator is a number from 0 to 9. Enter 0 if you do not wish to drop any low scored for this category. Enter a number from 1 to 9 to tell TGA how many of the lowest scores to drop. NOTE: TGA will only drop low grades if the number of grades exceeds the number to drop. In other words, TGA will drop the lowest two grades only if you have three or more grades for that category. For example, a typical Speech class might have the following SCORING record: GRADING FILE TYPE PCT DROP? ___________________________________ 4SPEECH Orals 50 1 Tests 35 0 Homework 15 0 In this record, "4SPEECH" is the name of the grading file you created (using the GRADING program) for 4th period Speech class. There are three types of grades: "Orals" for in-class speeches, "Tests" for in- class tests, and "Homework" for outside assignments. Respectively, these three categories of grades contribute 50%, 35%, and 15% toward the final grade for the grading period. The lowest "Orals" grade will automatically be dropped for each student in the class (unless the student has only one grade). From the SCORING MENU, pressing F1 will allow you to enter or edit the TYPE, PCT, and DROP values for the hilighted grading file. The grading file whose type/percent/drop information you are editing will remain hilighted. You will be prompted to enter a grade type (up to 8 letters), a grade percentage (up to 100 percent), and a single digit (0-9) indicator to automatically drop the lowest grade(s) for each student. When you have entered all of the scoring information for a particular grading file, just press ESCAPE to return to the menu of grading files. From the SCORING MENU, pressing F2 will allow you to enter the letter grade range values. You probably won't need to do this very often. If you press F2, you will be prompted to enter both the grade letter scheme you wish (such as "A", "B", "C") and the numeric score at which each letter grade range begins. Press ESCAPE when you are finished. For example, if the GRADE section looked like: A+ 98 A 95 A- 92 B+ 90 .......and so on 32 32 then you are saying that an "A+" is a score from 98 to 100, an "A" is from 95 to 97, an "A-" is from 92 to 94, a "B+" is from 90 to 91, and so on. The default case for TGA is to use "A" through "D" -- each modified with a "+" or "-", and "F". You may change this grading scheme by simply editing the grade letters and putting the ones you prefer in place of them. NOTE: The lowest grade letter (such as an "U" or "F") should have a minimum grade level of zero (0). Several reports, and all of the TGAGRAPH bar graphs, will summarize grade averages using the first letter of the letter grade. That is, if you use "A+", "A", _____ and "A-" then those reports will summarize the number of students whose score is any of the three as an "A". From the Scoring Menu, pressing F3 will insert a blank line above the _____ currently highlighted grading file. This might be useful if the order of grading files is significant in your reports. Pressing F4 from the Scoring menu will remove the currently highlighted grading file entry from your list of grading files. It does not actually delete the grading file; it merely removes it from the Scoring Menu list of classes. Summary of Special Data Entry Keys __________________________________ When you are entering textual information (like student names) or numerical information (like grades), you may find the following special keys handy: ESCAPE signals The Grading Assistant program that you wish to exit from the current menu or action DELETE removes (deletes) the character above the cursor, or the whole grade/student/item from many menus. In some menus, the DELETE key performs a specific action listed at the bottom of the screen. BACKSPACE removes the letter/digit to the left of the cursor END positions the cursor to the end of the value HOME positions the cursor to the start of the value arrow moves the cursor around on the screen, in the direction of the arrow keys INSERT turns insert mode on or off to permit either overtyping (the default) or insertion of text. (This does not work on numeric values, like grades.) In some menus, the INSERT key performs a specific action listed at the bottom of the screen. 33 33 When you are entering alphanumeric information (such as student names or class descriptions), The Grading Assistant automatically removes any leading or trailing blanks from your entry. When you are entering numeric information (such as student grades), The Grading Assistant will automatically replace the current value if you begin to type a new one. For example, if the hilighted grade is "76" and you type "8", the "76" disappears and "8" appears in its place. As you type succeeding digits, the digits are added to the right. In the previous example, if you next type "6", then you will see a grade of "86" in the hilighted area. Displaying and Printing Reports _______________________________ When you are in The Grading Assistant main menu and you select menu item #3, you will display the Reports Menu, shown below: The Grading Assistant -- MAIN REPORTS MENU __________________________________________ +---------------------------------------+ Main Reports Menu | | +---------------------------------------+ +---------------------------------------+ Current Grading Period Reports Menu | | Grade Period: Averages by Student | | Yearly: Averages by Class/Student | | Yearly: Averages by Student | | Yearly: Students Changing Classes | | +---------------------------------------+ Each of the items in this menu represents a different report. To begin a report, simply move the cursor bar up or down to highlight the desired report, then press ENTER, or, press the hilighted letter in the the report menu. With the exception of the class roster (which doesn't make much sense to display), all reports can either be viewed at your PC or printed on your local printer. Any of the reports can be aborted, if necessary, by pressing the ESCAPE key while they are running. After noticing the ESCAPE, TGA will stop the report at the next convenient breaking point and return you to the Reports Menu. The available reports are described below. Current Period Grade Average Reports ____________________________________ If you select menu item #1 from the Main Reports Menu, you will display the Current Period Reports Menu. TGA has so many reports that they cannot all fit neatly on one menu. Thus, the seven reports which use information from your current grading period have all been collected in a separate menu. 34 34 +----------------------------------+ Current Period Reports Menu | | +----------------------------------+ +----------------------------------+ Averages by Class/Student | | Student Interim Grade Report | | List of Class/Student Grades | | Student ZERO Grades Listing | | Print Class Roster | | Post Class/Student Averages | | Individual Student Grade Report | | +----------------------------------+ When you select item #1 from the Current Reports Menu, the Current Grade Average report will be run. This report shows current grade averages for each class and for each student in that class. When you select item #2 from the Current Reports Menu, you will run the Interim Report program. This program produces an individual report for each of your students whose overall current grade average is less than a cut-off score which you specify. To display or print a listing of the grades for one or more classes (essentially, this is a snapshot of what you see for a class while in the Grading Menu), select item #3 from the Current Reports Menu. To generate a listing of students who have one or more ZERO grades in a class, select item #4 to run the ZERO Grades Listing report. To print a roster of students in one or more of your classes, perhaps for use in recording grades or attendance, select item #5 from the Current Reports Menu. To post class grades at the end of a grading period, showing student identifiers rather than names to maintain anonymity, select item #6 from the Current Reports Menu. To generate an individual report for each student in selected classes, select item #7 from the Current Reports Menu. This report will list each of the students' grades, and it shows their overall grade average for this period. Like the Interim Report, this report allows you to selectively include/exclude students from the report. All of these can be displayed on your PC monitor, directed to a DOS file named TGA.OUT, or printed on your local printer. The report program will ask you to select the desired output method from a menu. Regardless which report you select, the reporting program uses the information you have previously entered from the GRADING MENU and the SCORING MENU during this period. The report will display a menu with the names of all your grading files on the screen, and give you the option to select the ones you wish to include. By default, no files are selected. To select a file, move the cursor to highlight the file, then press INSERT. To omit a file, move the cursor to highlight the file, then press DELETE. Pressing the SPACE BAR will "toggle" the 35 35 current file--selecting it if it was omitted, or omitting it if it was selected. Selected files are annotated by a pair of brackets. Omitted files have no annotation. Pressing CONTROL and ENTER simultaneously will select or omit all the files. When all files are marked appropriately, press ENTER to run the report. Or, press ESCAPE to return to the main menu. For the files you decide to display/print, the report programs read the class grading files and display/print current student information. Any errors which the program encounters, such as misspelled grading file names or undefined grade types, are either displayed on your PC screen or printed on your listing. All of the report programs check to make sure your printer is ready if you try to print the report. If your printer isn't ready, the program will beep and display an error message. All you need to do is correct the situation (for example, by turning on your printer or by adding paper to it) and press ENTER to continue. Entering Heading/Footing/Comments on the Interim Report _______________________________________________________ The Interim Report is a little different from the others. Many schools have their own formats for these reports, and they may require information not available to The Grading Assistant (such as a class section number or the dates of the grading period). To give you the maximum flexibility, the Interim Report has four sections. Section 1 is the Heading -- up to ten lines of text that you define. Section 2 is the main body of the report, student grade averages computed by TGA. Section 3 is up to ten lines of text for individualized student comments which you may enter. Section 4 is the Footing -- up to ten lines of text that you define. For example, a typical Interim Report would have a Heading that gave the name of the school system and the grading period number or dates. The Footing for this report might explain the purpose of an Interim Report, or give your office hours and telephone number. Using the Heading and Footing, you can personalize your Interim Reports. Both the Heading and Footing are optional. If you omit them (leave them blank) then nothing is printed for them. The Heading and Footing are the same for every student. In addition, you can enter an individual comment for each student if you choose. If you want to enter individual student comments, TGA will prompt you to enter comments for each student whose grade is below the cut-off. Comments are optional, and if you omit them for a student (by leaving them blank) then nothing is printed for them. To enter text for the Interim Report Heading, Footing, or Student Comment, you simply type the desired text in the hilighted area on the screen. TGA will prompt you once, at the beginning of the report, to enter the Heading and Footing, and again for each student whose average is below the grade threshold you set. TGA will pause while you 36 36 type the student comments, then print them (after you press ESCAPE) and go on to the next student. While you are entering your Heading, Footing, or Student Comments, TGA acts like a typical typewriter. You simply type the desired text, pressing ENTER (or ENTER) to go to a new line. Use the arrow keys to move the cursor. HOME and END take you to the start and end, respectively, of the current line. DELETE removes the character above the cursor. BACKSPACE removes the character to the left of the cursor. INSERT toggles you between insertion and overtype modes. (The cursor is larger while you are in insertion mode, and normal sized otherwise.) It is best to think of the comment as ten lines. To insert a blank line, just move the cursor to the line where you want a new line to be inserted and press CONTROL and N (for New line) at the same time. To delete the current line, just press CONTROL and Y at the same time. In general, if you are familiar with the standard WordStar formatting commands, the majority of the simple ones work the same in TGA's Interim Report comment editor. NOTE: TGA does not save the student comments you enter. It merely ____ formats and prints them on the report. The Heading and Footing information, however, are stored permanently in files named INTERIMS.HDF and INTERIMS.FTF, respectively, since you will probably wish to use them many times. NOTE: TGA does not prompt you to enter Heading, Footing, or Student ____ Comments if you are displaying the report rather than printing it or directing it to a file. Including/Excluding Students on Individual and Interim Reports ______________________________________________________________ The Interim Report and Individual Student Report permit you, if you are printing the report rather than displaying it, to selectively exclude students. Why might you use this feature? Perhaps you have a class in which special education students have been "mainstreamed". All of the students in your class, except the special education students, might be given an interim grade report if their grades are below 70%. Or, alternatively, you may have a class with a mixture of average and high achievement students. You might wish to send interim reports for high achievement students whose grades drop below a "B". In any case, TGA lets you selectively exclude students from the printed report. When you run the printed Individual Student Report or Interim Report _______ program, TGA will ask you if you wish to be able to selectively exclude students. If you press "Y", for Yes, then you will be prompted for each student who would normally be printed in the report. If you press "N", for No, then all selected students will be printed in the report and you will not be prompted for each one. 37 37 If you elect to use selective exclusion, then for each student to be printed you will be prompted to enter: Y--yes, include this student in the report N--no, exclude this student from the report I--include this student and all the rest in this class X--exclude this student and all the rest in this class The "I" and "X" options are simply conveniences that keep you from having to enter "Y" or "N" for the rest of the students in a class. Note that "I" and "X" only hold for the current class. If you select several classes for the reports, the exclusion prompts will begin anew with each class. Saving Interim Report Student Names for Labels ______________________________________________ If you are printing the Interim Grade Average Report or saving it to ________ the TGA.OUT DOS file, the program will ask if you wish to save the names of students for use in printing gummed labels. If you wish TGA to create a file named INTERIMS.TGA that contains the names of students whose grade averages are below the threshold you set, simply answer Y (for Yes) to that prompt. Otherwise, answer N (for No). If you answer Yes, an INTERIMS.TGA file of ASCII text will be created. Refer to the TGA Information Menu for additional information about printing gummed address labels. End-Of-Year Grading Reports ___________________________ At the end of the grading year, or during the year if you wish, you can review the cumulative grade averages for your students. The easiest way to do this is to run the year-to-date grade average report. To do this, select the desired report from the main Reports Menu. The year-to-date report program looks for one or more files named "YEAREND.!nn" where "nn" is the grading period number from 01 to 12. (Those files are created at the end of grading periods when you select the #1 item from the end-of-grading-period menu.) The program reads these saved grade average summary files, and generates a combined report for each class and student. The report shows the student average for each grading period, and computes a year-to-date numerical average and letter grade. NOTE: This report matches grade averages from each grading period by ____ using the class subject, class period, and student name. For example, all of the grading period average records for subject "English", "1st" period, student "Doe, John" would be collected to compute the year-to- date grade average. If you change the name of a student during the year, or if you move the student from one class period or subject to another, or if you change the class subject, there is no way for this report to understand the change you made. In that case, the report will print some of the grading period averages for the student in one 38 38 place, and the rest in another. There is, unfortunately, no way around this problem since: (1) you may have the same student in more than one class subject or period, (2) you may have different students in different classes with the same name, and (3) you may have students who join your class at midyear, or who leave it. TGA is good, but it can't read minds. There is, however, one alternative report you might find useful in this case. By selecting item #5 from the Reports Menu, you will display or print the year-to-date averages for all students who changed periods within the same subject. In other words, if Johnny _______________________________________ Appleseed changed from your 2nd period English class to your 3rd period class, this program will notice that fact and display his grade average summary regardless of the class period to which he is currently assigned. In combination with the other reports, this should permit you to compute almost 100% of the yearly averages for your students. If you want the Year-to-Date Grade Average Report, but you'd prefer to have it sorted alphabetically by student name rather than by class, select item #4 from the Reports Menu. This report gives you the same results as selecting item #3, but sorted by student name. (Naturally, this sort is only useful if you entered student names in LASTNAME, FIRSTNAME format.) There is one additional report you might find useful at the end of a grading period. Some schools require their teachers to keep student grade averages by class, but to enter them into another master grade register alphabetically by student name. That means you would have to flip through a lot of pages in your grade book (or TGA reports) to find the students in alphabetical order. But by selecting item #2 from the Reports Menu, you can generate a report for a single grading period, listing all of your students in alphabetical order -- regardless of their class period or subject. You may never need to use this report. But if your school is like many, it will save you hours of flipping through pages. Starting a New Grading Period _____________________________ OK, your grading period is over and all of your class average reports have been run. Report cards are handed out. So what do you do to start the next grading period? STEP 1: You need to make a permanent copy of the class averages for ______ use at the end of the grading year. To do this, you select the end-of- grading-period menu by selecting menu item #4 from The Grading Assistant main menu. You will see the following menu appear on your PC screen: 39 39 The Grading Assistant -- END-OF-GRADING-PERIOD MENU ___________________________________________________ +-----------------------------------------------+ End-of-Grading-Period Menu | | +-----------------------------------------------+ +-----------------------------------------------+ Save grades for the year-end reports | | Reset class grades for the year-end reports | | Edit previous grade average summary files | | Rename old grading period summary file | | Erase old grading period summary file | | Zap all data files for new school year | | +-----------------------------------------------+ Use the cursor arrows to select the desired operation, then press ENTER to execute it. Or use the function keys instead. Select menu item #1 to save the grade averages. You will be prompted to enter the grading period number (from 1 through 12). For example, if you are teaching in a six-weeks grading period and this is the end of the second six-weeks period, you would enter "2". This program creates a grade average summary file named "YEAREND.!nn", where "nn" is the grading period (from 01 to 12). What do you do if you run the grade average saving program prematurely? Don't worry. Just wait until your grades are truly final, then run it again. You will be prompted to confirm that you want to overwrite (replace) the previous grade average summary file for this grading period. Respond with "Y", and you're back in business. Some schools have a MINIMUM grade average so that students who have one bad grading period won't ruin their entire year's average. For example, your school might have a policy that no grading period average below 65 is permitted. TGA helps you here by prompting you to enter the minimum grade average permitted. If you enter 65, for example, then any student whose overall grade is below 65 will be stored for the year-end average as 65. If you don't want to use this feature, just enter zero (0) for the minimum average -- then whatever grade a student earns is what TGA will save. NOTE: This feature only applies to the grade average stored for use in the single-grading- period and year-end reports. It does not affect the current or interim grade average report grades. STEP 2: You should make a backup copy of the floppy diskette or hard ______ disk directory which has your current grading files on it. That backup copy becomes your permanent record of the grades and averages. Put the backup diskette aside for safekeeping. The next section tells you how to make the backup copy. FLOPPY DISK: If you have a floppy disk system, use the following steps ___________ to make your diskette copy: 1. Exit from TGA to DOS. Put your DOS diskette in drive A:, then enter: 40 40 A:DISKCOPY A: B: 2. You will be prompted to insert the source and target diskettes. Put your Grading Assistant data diskette (the one with the grade _____________ files for this grading period) in the A: drive, and a blank _____ diskette in the B: drive, when you are prompted to do so by the ________ DISKCOPY program. The DISKCOPY command will make the B: diskette an exact duplicate of the A: diskette. NOTE: You don't need to format the new diskette first since DISKCOPY will format it if necessary. 3. When the DISKCOPY command finishes, put the diskette in the A: drive away for safekeeping. Use the diskette in the B: drive for the next grading period. HARD DISK: If you have a hard disk system, use The Grading Assistant _________ Utility Menu BACKUP program (menu item #7) to copy the data files to a blank, formatted floppy diskette or to another hard disk directory. STEP 3: You need to "reset" your grading files for the next grading ______ period -- erasing all of the grades from the period just ended. Start The Grading Assistant, and select item #4 from the main menu. The end- of-grading-period menu will appear. From that menu, select the #2 menu item to remove all grades in all grading files. Respond to the "are you sure?" prompt by pressing Y, for yes. The reset program reads the SCORING file to identify your grading files. Then, one by one, each grading file is copied and all student grades are removed. All other class and student information is retained. When the program completes, your grading files are ready for the next grading period. Please be careful! If you prematurely run the grade reset program, it will erase all of your data for the current grading period. (Then, only a backup copy can save you from re-keying the information.) By selecting item #3 from the end-of-grading-period menu, you can edit the names and grades of students in any previously saved end-of- grading-period summary file. This might be useful for: correcting the misspelling of a student's name throughout several grading periods, deleting the records of a student who transferred from the school, adding the records of a student who transferred into the school, or correcting a grade average that was manually adjusted after the grading period was final. Be careful! The grades and names in TGA grading period summary files reflect the ones you presumably filed with the school system. Use this feature judiciously. What should you do if you inadvertently enter the wrong grading period number as you are saving your grades for the year-end reports? Well, if you entered a previous grading period number (say you are in grading period 5 and you entered a 4 by mistake), TGA will warn you that you already have a grading summary file for that period. Just 41 41 tell TGA "N"--for no--when it asks if you wish to write over that previous grading summary file. But suppose you are in grading period 5 and you entered a 6 by mistake. You can rename the summary file, giving it the correct grading period number. Or you can erase the unwanted summary file. Selecting the #4 or #5 items from the end-of-grading-period menu permit you to rename or erase a saved grading period summary file. You will be prompted to enter the grading period number of the file you accidentally created. Selecting item #6 from the end-of-grading-period menu will erase all of the grading files. You should only use this if you are running TGA from a hard disk, and you want to begin a new school by wiping out last year's grade files. Be careful! If you run this prematurely, you can erase a lot of keying work in a few seconds. DOS Utilities _____________ DOS provides commands to display file names (DIR), copy files (XCOPY and COPY), erase them (DEL and ERASE), and rename them (RENAME), as well as programs to set (CHDIR) and list (DIR) DOS disk and path identifiers. If you are familiar with these commands, then you may not need to use the TGA DOS utility menu. This menu simply provides a way for you to perform those functions without leaving The Grading Assistant program. If you wish to use the DOS Utilities, you begin by selecting menu item #5 from The Grading Assistant main menu. The PC screen will clear, and the following menu will appear: The Grading Assistant -- UTILITY MENU _____________________________________ +--------------------------------------------+ Utility Menu | | +--------------------------------------------+ +--------------------------------------------+ Change the name of a file | | Erase a file | | Make a duplicate copy of a file | | Change the TGA data file path | | Change the TGA data disk | | List the files in a disk/path | | Make a backup copy of your files | | Restore your files from a backup | | Temporary exit to DOS; EXIT returns | | +--------------------------------------------+ Use the cursor arrows and ENTER key to select the desired function, or press one of the highlighted letters in the desired menu item to execute it. The program will prompt you to identify the file to be 42 42 renamed, erased, or copied, or the disk/path to be listed or changed. If you change your mind about performing this function, simply press ENTER without typing a file name, and the program will return to this menu. Press ESCAPE to exit from this menu and return to The Grading Assistant main menu. One use you might make of the UTILITY program is when you have the same students in several classes. For example, suppose your class remains the same for 1st period Reading, 2nd period Spelling, and 3rd period Social Studies. You can use the GRADING MENU program (item #1 from the main Grading Assistant menu) to enter the students in your 1st period Reading class. Then you can use the UTILITY COPY program (item #3 from the UTILITY menu) to duplicate the 1st period class for 2nd and 3rd period. That will keep you from having to type the student names in each class. Now, all you will need to do is correct the class period and subject information the next time you use the GRADING MENU program for your 2nd and 3rd period classes. Selecting item #4 is useful if you want to change the data directory on which TGA should look for your grading files. There are several reasons you might want to do this. First, you may have forgotten to tell TGA the name of your disk and path when you started the program. No problem. Just go to the Utility Menu, select item #4, and tell TGA the data path. Another reason you might want to use this feature is if several teachers are sharing a single PC, and each keeps their grading files in a separate directory. With the data path changing feature you can switch between them easily. Item #5 is similar to #4 in that it lets you switch to a new data disk. The file listing feature (item #6) is handy if you can't remember the name of a particular file. It gives you a list of all the files in a directory, similar to the output of a DOS DIR (directory) command. Backing up your data files (using item #7) is crucial. You never know what might happen to your data -- your hard disk might crash, your dog might chew your floppy disks, or your pre-schooler might use your floppy drive for a toaster. The safest approach is to make backup copies of your data to either another hard disk path and/or to a floppy diskette. To be truly safe, keep the backup copies and your original TGA diskette in another location (perhaps locked in your office). Then, if your data is ever damaged, you can use TGA to restore the data files (using item #8). Sometimes you need to temporarily suspend your program, drop into DOS to do a few commands, then return to the program. TGA lets you do this easily from the Utility Menu. Simply select item #9 from the Utility Menu and you will temporarily drop into DOS mode. When you are ready to return to TGA, just enter "EXIT" as a DOS command. Note: TGA ____ remains loaded in memory while you are in DOS, so you will have about 350K less memory while in temporary DOS mode than you normally have. Also, TGA looks for the location of your COMMAND.COM file (the main DOS program) by searching for your COMSPEC (don't worry if you don't know what a COMSPEC is -- it is automatically setup for you when you 43 43 load DOS). Naturally, for TGA to be able to drop into DOS, you need to have a copy of COMMAND.COM in whichever disk and path your COMSPEC points to. Usually this is in C:\ on your hard disk or A:\ on your floppy disk system. Detailed Example ________________ The following is a detailed example of how you might use The Grading Assistant. Let's suppose you teach two classes: a first period English class and a second period Science class. Your first step after installing The Grading Assistant will be to set up a grading file for each class. 1. You start The Grading Assistant by entering the command: TGA 2. The main Grading Assistant menu appears on your screen. You select the GRADING MENU by pressing ENTER. 3. The grading screen appears. You are prompted to enter the name of the grading file you wish. Since you do not yet have any grading files, you invent an appropriate name for the first period class; you enter: 1ENGLISH 4. The program recognizes this as a new file name, and asks you if you want to create it. You press: Y (for YES) 5. You will be prompted to enter the class description (TEACHER, SUBJECT, PERIOD, and GRADING METHOD). Enter each by typing the desired information and pressing ENTER after each one. You will be prompted to enter STUDENTS. One at a time, type the name of your students and (optionally) their student identifier. The format of the names doesn't matter. It can be LAST, FIRST (Doe, John) or FIRST LAST (John Doe) or whatever you wish. (I recommend Last, First if you want TGA's help in sorting the students alphabetically.) If you have less than 45 students, when you have entered the last student name, merely press ENTER when you are prompted for the next name. This signals the Grading Menu that all names have been entered. 6. Press ESCAPE to signify that your grading file is complete. The program will ask you if you want to save these changes. Press: Y 7. The program will ask you if you want to enter grades for another file. Since you want to set up the second period class, press: Y 8. A new (blank) grading screen will appear and you will be prompted for the desired grading file to use. This time, enter an appropriate name for your second period class: 2SCIENCE 9. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for your second period class. When you are finished, you are ready to end the grading menu because your 44 44 grading files are created. This time, when the program asks you if you want to enter grades for another file, press: N (for NO) 10. You are now back at the main Grading Assistant menu again. You can press ESCAPE to end the program. Let's now suppose you are ready to enter grades for your first period class. You need to think about the types of grades you will score in that class. For example, you might decide to score DAILY grades, TEST grades, and WRITING projects. Start The Grading Assistant just like you did earlier by entering: TGA 1. From The Grading Assistant main menu, select the GRADING MENU by pressing ENTER. 2. The grading menu will appear, and you will be prompted for the name of the desired grading file. Enter: 1ENGLISH 3. Since the 1ENGLISH grading file already exists, the information from the file will be retrieved and displayed on the screen. You are now ready to enter grades. 4. Move the cursor (the hilighted area on the screen) by pressing the arrow keys until you are in a column which has no grades. Press F4 to enter an entire column of student grades. You will be prompted to enter the integer value for a perfect score. Just press ENTER if it is "100". Next, you will be prompted to enter the DATE, TYPE, and DESCRIPTION for the grade column. Type each in turn and press ENTER after each one. Remember: you decided to ________ use DAILY, TEST, and WRITING as your grade types. So you should type one of these three choices in response to the TYPE prompt. 5. One by one, the hilighted cursor will prompt you to type the grade for the student on that row. Enter each grade by typing the numeric grade and pressing ENTER. You can use either the number keys at the top of the keyboard or the ones on the numeric keypad. If a student does not have a grade, simply press ENTER without typing a grade. When you have entered a grade for every student, the computer will beep to signal the end of the column. 6. Repeat steps 4 and 5 until all grades are entered. If you made any mistakes keying grades, simply move the cursor to the incorrect grade and retype it. 7. Press ESCAPE to end grade entry. Do you want to save these changes? Press: Y 8. Do you want to enter grades for another class? Press: Y 9. Repeat steps 2 through 7 for the second period class, substituting "2SCIENCE" for "1ENGLISH" as the grading file name. When you are finished, respond by pressing "N" in response to the 45 45 prompt about entering grades for another class. You are now back in the main Grading Assistant menu. 10. OK, let's define these two classes to our Scoring Menu. Select item #2 from the main menu (to display the Scoring Menu). Respond with "Y" to the prompt about loading recently created grading file names. TGA will load the names for you. Then, press ESCAPE and enter "Y" to exit and save the files. 11. Last, let's print class rosters for these two. Select item #3 from the main menu to display the Reports Menu. Press ENTER to select the Current Period Reports. Then, select item #5 to run the Class Rosters report. You will see a listing of these two grading files. Since you want to print rosters for both classes, make sure your printer is powered on and ready to print, then press CONTROL + ENTER to select all files, then press ENTER to run the report. The Grading Assistant will print a roster for each class. When the printing is complete, you will again be in the Current Reports Menu. Now press ESCAPE three times (once to exit from the Current Reports Menu, again to exit from the Reports Menu, and a final time to leave The Grading Assistant and return to DOS). Let's suppose it is the middle of the grading period, and you are ready to print grade averages for your students to see how they are doing. You need to first tell The Grading Assistant how you wish to compute grade averages for each class. Start the program as before, by entering: TGA 1. From the main Grading Assistant menu, select item #2 to run the SCORING program. The SCORING menu will appear on the screen. 2. TGA will ask you if you wish to load the previously created grading file names. Press Y, for Yes, if you have any. The file name 1ENGLISH will be listed among the grading files. Move the cursor up/down until that file is highlighted. 3. Press F1 to enter the grade types, percentages, and low score drop counts for this class. 4. Notice that the first line (initially blank) in the TYPE column will be hilighted. Enter the first grade type you decided to use. (Remember: you decided to use DAILY, TEST, and WRITING.) You enter: DAILY 5. Now the first line of the PCT (short for percentage) column is hilighted. Enter the percentage (from 1 to 100) of the final grade which this grade type will make up. Let's suppose DAILY grades are worth 50%. You enter: 50 NOTE: You do not enter the percent sign (%). "50" means "50%". ______ 46 46 6. Now the first line of the DROP# column is hilighted. Enter 1 if you want to automatically drop the low DAILY score for each student. Otherwise, enter 0. Let's suppose you enter: 1 7. Repeat steps 4 through 6 for the other two grade types: TEST and WRITING, but enter 0 for the number of low scores to drop. 8. There are no more grade types to enter, so you just press the ESCAPE key. If the total of your category percentages does not total 100, you will see an error message. But you can ignore it if for some reason you want the total to be more or less than 100. 9. Repeat steps 2 through 8 for each additional grading file. Each file goes on a separate line of the GRADE FILES column. As you move the hilighted cursor up/down the column, the TYPE, PCT, and DROP values for that grade file will be displayed. 10. When you are finished, press ESCAPE to signal that you are ready to exit. You will be asked if you want to save these changes. Press: Y 11. You are now back in the main Grading Assistant menu. Let's suppose you are ready to print a listing of student averages. You are in the main Grading Assistant menu, so select item #3 to run the Reports Menu program. From that menu, press ENTER to select the Current Period Reports Menu. Select item #1 from that menu to run the Current Grade Average report. Select the "Print" output option from the menu. You will see a list of your grading files (as defined in the SCORING MENU). Mark any files you wish to select using the INSERT key, or CONTROL + ENTER to select/omit all. All other files (not selected) will not be printed. When you are ready to print, press ENTER. 1. If you told TGA to DISPLAY your report, at the end of each screenfull of information you would be asked to press the ENTER key to continue the display on the next screen. But since you told TGA to PRINT your report, a one-page report will be printed for each grading file you selected. When the printing is complete, you will be back in The Grading Assistant main menu. 2. You can review the displayed/printed report to see for each student: his/her average for each grade category, his/her overall average as a numerical score, and his/her overall average as a letter grade. A count of students by grade letter (A, B, C, D, and F) is also shown on the report. Now you wish to send home a note to all parents whose children are failing in your classes. In your school, a grade average below 70 is failing. You select item #2 in the Current Period Reports Menu, to print student interim grade reports. Select the "Print" menu option. Press "N" to skip the entry of individual comments for each student. The program asks you for the grade below which students will be reported. You enter: 70. The program generates a report (one student 47 47 per page) for all students in all classes who are failing. At the end of the reports, press ESCAPE to return to the Reports Menu, and press ESCAPE again to return to the Main Menu. One more ESCAPE and you are back in DOS. Congratulations! You have now run through a complete cycle of grade definition and entry during a grading period. Graphing Your Grade Averages ____________________________ This version of The Grading Assistant includes a graphics display program named TGAGRAPH. If your PC has graphics capability, then you can use TGAGRAPH to display current grade averages and previous grading period averages as simple bar graphs. This might be useful to help you look for unusual grade distributions. The TGAGRAPH program and data files were automatically installed when you installed the main TGA program. To run the program, begin as you do to run the main TGA program. But instead of typing "TGA", enter: TGAGRAPH disk/path colorswitch _________ ___________ where "disk/path" is an optional DOS disk and/or path identifier that specifies where your data files are located, and "colorswitch" is an optional flag to tell TGA to display in color (use "/C") or monochrome (use "/M"). The syntax for the disk/path is the same as for the main TGA program. When you run the program, you will see the following menu appear: The Grading Assistant -- GRAPHICS MENU ______________________________________ +--------------------------------------------+ Main Menu | | +--------------------------------------------+ +--------------------------------------------+ Display current grade average graphs | | Display prior period average graphs | | Display year-end average graphs | | +--------------------------------------------+ Select item #1 to display a bar graph for each selected class in the current grading period. Your menus and graphs will represent the same information as shown in the Current Grade Average reports seen by running the current grading period average report from the TGA Reports Menu. Select item #2 to display bar graphs for each class in any of the prior grading periods. Your graphs will represent the same information as shown in the Grade Period Summary reports seen by running the grading period report from the main reports menu. 48 48 Select item #3 to display the year-to-date grade average bar graphs for each class. Your graphs will represent the summary information as shown in the Year-end Report seen by running the yeat-to-date reports from the main reports menu. TGAGRAPH begins by checking your PC to find out the type of graphics display and monitor you have. It automatically loads the appropriate graphics interface (one of several data files whose file extension is BGI). It is important that the BGI files and the TGAGRAPH.EXE program are both in the same DOS disk and path, and that you begin executing TGAGRAPH while that directory is the current directory. Otherwise, the ____ TGAGRAPH program will not be able to find the graphics interface files and the program will end with an error message. NOTE: There are dozens of different types of graphics display adapters and monitors, each with its own peculiarities. TGA makes a best-effort to detect the type of graphics your system can support. TGAGRAPH will display bar graphs one at a time. Just press ENTER to view the next one. After the last graph has been displayed you will be returned to the main TGAGRAPH menu. Printing a Copy of your Graph _____________________________ How do you print copies of the bar graphs you see on your PC? Well, if _____ you have a dot matrix printer that is compatible with the Epson FX graphics mode, the IBM Graphics Printer mode, or the IBM Proprinter Graphics mode, then it is easy. Before the first graph is displayed, you will be asked if you wish to be able to print copies of the graphics. If you enter "Y", for yes, then you will be prompted to enter the type of graphics your printer supports: "E" for Epson FX, or "I" for IBM Graphics/Proprinter. You will also be prompted to make your printer ready if it isn't already. Then, after each graph is displayed on your screen, you can either press ENTER to skip to the next graph, or "P" (for Print) to print that graphic. If you have a CGA or MCGA graphics card/monitor, then you can also use the DOS GRAPHICS command. Just run the GRAPHICS command before you run ______ TGAGRAPH. (See your DOS manual for instructions.) Then, when you want to print a graphic that is displayed on your PC, just press the Print Screen key (or press SHIFT and Print Screen on some keyboards). The DOS GRAPHICS command will do the rest, translating a copy of the screen and printing it on your IBM/Epson compatible printer. If you have a Hercules card or one of many varieties of EGA/VGA graphics cards/monitors, then your graphics card may have also come with a special program that works like the GRAPHICS DOS command does for CGA and MCGA. Just run that program before you execute TGAGRAPH, then use the Print Screen feature to print the graphic. You will also find a variety of shareware and commercial products that replace the DOS GRAPHICS command and work on a wide range of PC graphics cards/monitors. You will only need to use these if your 49 49 printer doesn't support the Epson FX, IBM Graphics, or IBM Proprinter graphics standard. Student Information Records ___________________________ This version of TGA contains a product -- TGAINFO -- which helps you keep student information records. There are many good reasons for keeping some basic name and address information for your students. You may need to call the students or their parents at home or at the parent's office. You may need to send information to the students or their parents at home. The Grading Assistant makes it easy for you to keep this information by providing a separate program named TGAINFO. To run this program, just enter: TGAINFO disk/path colorswitch _________ ___________ where disk/path is an optional DOS disk identifier and path name for _________ your grading files, and colorswitch is an optional flag to tell TGA to ___________ display in color (use "/C") or monochrome (use "/M"). The screen will clear and you will see the following menu: The Grading Assistant -- STUDENT INFORMATION MAIN MENU ______________________________________________________ +--------------------------------------------+ Main Menu | | +--------------------------------------------+ +--------------------------------------------+ Add students from grading files | | Edit or Delete student information | | Run Student Information Report | | Interim Grade Average Report Labels | | Labels for an entire class | | +--------------------------------------------+ Select one of the four actions, or ESCAPE to quit and return to DOS. #1 This will display the student information loading menu. You will be prompted to enter the name of an existing grading file. The names of students from that file will automatically be loaded and displayed in a menu. You can enter or edit the student information records for each student in the class. #2 This will display the student information editing menu. The names of students that you have previously loaded from your classes (using item #1, above) will be displayed. You can edit the address information, or delete the student information record entirely, for any of these students. #3 This lets you display on the PC or print on your printer a report of the student names and addresses. 50 50 #4 When used in conjunction with the Interim Grade Average Report from the main TGA program, this can be used to print gummed address labels for each of the students to receive an interim report. #5 This lets you print gummed address labels for an entire class grading file. If you select item #1 or #2, you will see the student information loading/editing menu. Loading/Editing Student Information ___________________________________ +--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+ | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | +--------------------+--------------------+--------------------+ +-----HOME------++-----WORK------+ Telephone: | ++ | Parent/Guardian: ++ ++ Address: | | | | +------------------------------+ Loading Student Names from a Grading File _________________________________________ If you selected item #1 from the main TGA Information Menu, then you will be prompted to enter the name of a grading file. Simply type the name of the file and press ENTER. If the grading file name is correct, the upper part of the Loading Menu will display the names of students in that class. You can use the cursor to highlight a student, press ENTER to select the student, and fill in the information at the bottom of the menu for the student. If you want to enter information for all of the students ___ in a class, just press INSERT from the Loading Menu. One by one, each of the students will be automatically selected and you will be prompted to enter information for that student. Just type the 51 51 appropriate telephone numbers, parent's names, and address, and press ENTER after each entry. If you are editing the information for a single student and you want to duplicate for the selected student the same address information as the student you just entered, just enter the information for the first student, highlight the second student's name, then press DELETE instead of pressing ENTER. The information at the bottom will be filled in identically to that of the previous menu entry. Press ESCAPE when you have made all of the additions or corrections you wish to make for this class. Editing Student Information ___________________________ If you selected item #2 from the main Student Information menu, then you will see the names of the first 45 students from your loaded classes. Use the Page Up/Down keys select the desired group of student names. Move the cursor to highlight the desired name to change, then press ENTER to select a highlighted student whose information is to be edited. Or, press DELETE to delete the student record entirely. Printing Student Information ____________________________ If you selected item #3 from the main Student Information menu, then you will be asked whether you wish to print the report or display it on your PC. Select the "Print", "File", or "Display" option from the output selection menu. Both of the reports lists students alphabetically regardless of their class. Printing Gummed Labels ______________________ If you selected item #4 from the main Student Information menu, then you will be asked if you wish to print gummed labels or merely display their format on your PC. If you elect to print the labels, you should replace the paper in your printer with gummed labels that are: 1 inch high, 3-1/2 inches wide, and one column to a page. The program will automatically print the labels for all students who were identified in an earlier Interim Grade Average Report. Refer to the Interim Report of the main TGA program for information about how to identify these students. If you selected item #5 from the main Student Information menu, then you will be asked to name an existing class grading file. Just tell TGA which file you wish, and it will print a label for each student in the class. 52 52 Exporting Your Grades in DIF Format ___________________________________ One of the earliest generalized formats for exchanging data between two different programs was called DIFF (data interchange file format). It was used by VisiCalc and other early spreadsheet programs, and many current programs can still "import" data in DIF Format. This version of TGA has a special program named TGA2DIFF.EXE (TGA to DIF Format) that will create a DIFF data file containing the grading information from your current grading files. You might find this useful if your favorite database or graphics program accepts DIFF input. To run the DIFF conversion program, simply enter: TGA2DIFF disk/path colorswitch _________ ___________ This is the same format as the TGA, TGAGRAPH, and TGAINFO programs and, like them, you can tell TGA2DIFF where to look for your data files if they are not in your current DOS directory, and you can tell TGA to display in color (use "/C") or monochrome (use "/M"). TGA2DIFF will prompt you for the name of the grading file to be exported. As in the Grading Menu, you can press ENTER to get a list of your grading files. You will also be prompted to give the desired name for the DIFF output file. The name you choose will depend on the PC program that you intend to use to import the data. TGA2DIFF exports your data in the following format. Each data record consists of seven fields (or columns, if you prefer): NAME is the student's name ID is the student's ID, if any GR_DATE is the date of the grade GR_TYPE is the grade type/category GR_DESC is the grade's textual description GR_PTS is the maximum score possible for this grade GRADE is the student's score Thus, if your class had 20 students, each with 10 grades, you would have 200 (20 x 10) DIFF file records. This may seem like a lot of unnecessary repetition, but it the only way to export the data and give you the maximum flexibility to process it in your other PC programs. You may never need to use TGA2DIFF. But if your favorite graphics program would be useful in providing fancy charts from your school grades, this program may help. If there is sufficient interest from registered users, the author will consider added features for this program. Error Codes ___________ I sincerely hope you never see the TGA error message "Abnormal termination of TGA -- error code xxx" because it means that TGA had to stop running because it found a condition for which there was no remedy. Often, the cause isn't serious in that you can simply correct 53 53 whatever is wrong and continue by restarting TGA. But if you do run __ into this error message, here is what a few of the most likely error code numbers mean: 5 File access denied. Your disk may be full or damaged, your file directory may be full, or the file may be marked as read-only by some other program. 101 Disk write error. Your disk is probably full. 150 Disk is write-protected. 162 Hardware failure of your PC. 200 Divide by zero. TGA tries to prevent this, so if you find one of these it is probably condition TGA missed. Please let the author know if you find one. 202 Stack overflow error. Your PC does not have enough memory (RAM) to run TGA. 204 Invalid pointer operation. This is usually caused by your PC having insufficient free contiguous memory to run TGA. TGA uses and frees memory as it runs, and it is possible that after an extended session you won't have enough free pieces of memory for TGA to continue. Since these error messages mean that TGA was forced to end abruptly, there is always a slight chance that your data file (if you were running a TGA feature that updates files) may have been damaged. If this is the case, restore it from your most recent backup copy and re- enter the changes you made since then. Unfortunately, there isn't much TGA can do to protect itself against hardware failures. But you can help by ensuring that you have enough disk and memory to run TGA effectively, that your PC is in good working order, and that you backup your data regularly. Last Words __________ The Grading Assistant should make your job of recording grades and computing class averages much easier. Teachers have enough hard work to do without spending hours averaging grades with a calculator! Enjoy your copy of The Grading Assistant. And don't forget to send your registration card and $20 to the author. Comments and suggestions from registered users are always welcome. Happy grading! 54 54